CHAPTER XXI

THE END OF A CROOKED ROAD

Leaving the boys in wild commotion at the camp, Jimmie followed swiftly on in the direction which he believed Toombs to have taken.

“I just can’t let that geezer get away!” the boy muttered as he traveled over the rough ground at great speed.

After half an hour’s steady walking he came to an elevation from which he saw two figures moving away to the north. One of the men seemed to him to be Toombs, while the other might well be classed as an Indian. They were moving at a good pace, although the Indian was frequently obliged to assist his companion over rocky crags.

The two seemed entirely unconscious of pursuit. Indeed, as it was afterwards learned, they were beyond the sound of Gilroy’s voice when he shouted out the alarm which had awakened the boys. The fat clerk had been so frightened that he had made no attempt to sound an alarm until the Indian he feared was too far away to inflict injury upon him!

And so, believing that the boys still slept in the camp, and that the escape of their prisoner still remained undiscovered, the two made their way, not to the old camp near the mission, but toward the sheltered bit of ground which enclosed the Devil’s Punch Bowl.

“Now, I wonder why they are going there!” mused Jimmie, gaining upon the two fugitives every moment. “If that fellow who cut Toombs out of our camp,” he went on, “should prove to be a Hoola Indian, fully advised as to the deposit of gold, he might give Toombs information calculated to make us a lot of trouble.”

The boy was satisfied that neither Toombs nor any of the half-breeds possessed any information concerning the hidden mime. According to Norman’s story, only the Hoola Indians knew about the wonderful deposit which the boys had blundered upon during their trip to the underground passage. His thought now was that the Indian with Toombs might be leading that individual to the treasure.

Wishing earnestly that he had not started on such a mission alone, the boy followed on until the two stopped at the very verge of the Devil’s Punch Bowl. By this time Jimmie was completely exhausted. He had been on his feet all night, laboring under great excitement, and had had only a short bit of rest after breakfast. He was, therefore, more than glad when Toombs and the Indian paused at the Devil’s Punch Bowl and threw themselves on the ground.

Lying behind a boulder, the boy saw the Indian pointing down into the pit, and it seemed to him that he was directing the attention of his companion to the old channel where he, Jimmie, had met with such exciting adventures.

“It’s dollars to doughnuts,” the boy mused, “that that’s Sigma, the Indian, Norman referred to. If it is, he’s showing Toombs where the gold mine is. That’s just our luck, anyway!”

Foot by foot the boy passed from one rock to another until he came within sound of the men’s voices. He could not understand what the Indian was saying, but Toombs seemed to be able to grasp the meaning of the uncouth words used.

“And you say there are tons of gold under there?” the boy heard Toombs ask. “Is there any way of getting at it at once?”

Jimmie saw Sigma nod his head vigorously.

“Can you understand exactly what I say?” Toombs asked in a moment.

Sigma nodded again, and the Wall street man went on:

“What we want to do right now,” he said, “is to get the gold out without any publicity whatever. Do you understand that?”

The Indian looked puzzled at the long words used, but nodded. It was evident that he understood the general import of the other’s talk.

“The men I represent,” Toombs went on, “would throw a few dirty dollars into my lap for information which would bring them millions. Now my idea is to get the gold out and get away with it.”

“Say, Toombs,” Jimmie whispered to himself behind the rock, “you’re a dirty old schemer!”

“With the gold in our possession, we can disappear from the country, you and I. We need never trouble ourselves about money any more.”

The Indian nodded while a pleased smile came over his rugged face.

“How many know of this mine?” asked Toombs.

Sigma held up eight fingers and pointed into the pit.

“Only that many?” asked Toombs.

“The rest dead!” answered Sigma.

“And where are they now?” demanded the Wall street man.

“All in the mine getting out gold!” was the reply.

“They can get it out pretty fast, can’t they?” asked Toombs.

The Indian nodded, and said in a guttural voice that many great heaps of it had already been taken out of the rock and stored in the inner chamber. Toombs’ eyes brightened wickedly at the information.

“And they’re all in there now?” he asked. “All the heaps?”

Sigma nodded again.

“We don’t want anyone watching us,” Toombs explained, “so we must make sure about their all being in the cave. You go through the dry channel and find out if they are all really there, then come to the entrance and signal to me and go back and explain what we have planned—that I am to market the gold, for them and receive half.”

“Now it strikes me,” Jimmie mused, “that if I were in Sigma’s place, I wouldn’t go into that old channel and leave Toombs on the outside, especially if every living person having knowledge of the deposit of gold was on the inside, too!”

The Indian disappeared over the edge of the Devil’s Punch Bowl and made his way to the bottom, pursuing practically the same tactics resorted to by the boys the day before. As soon as he disappeared in the old dry channel, Toombs, who had carefully watched the Indian’s every move, proceeded to follow into the depression.

The man was fat, unwieldy, and out of training, but his greed for gold was so great, his daring so remarkable, that he managed to reach the bottom of the pit with only a few slight bruises. Jimmie lay down at the lip of the pit and regarded him quizzically.

“I’d like to know what the game is,” the boy thought.

The tragedy enacted before his eyes during the next hour informed him fully on this point.

In a short time Sigma returned to the entrance of the old channel and held up eight fingers to Toombs. His face showed surprise at seeing the Wall street man at the bottom of the pit. After giving the signal he stood with his head bowed for a moment, as if in deep thought, and then turned back into the tunnel.

It was then that the real purpose of the Wall street man became known. He threw off his coat and vest and began filling the channel leading to the crevice, now carrying away the waters of the pool! He worked frantically until the sweat streamed down his face in tiny rivulets, notwithstanding the cool air of the mountain.

At first he dug away with his fingers, but that appeared to be too slow a process for his eager haste. There were pieces of shale lying about which the boys had used the previous afternoon, and with these he made much better progress.

Although it had taken the boys a long time to dig the trench connecting the pool with its original outlet, it was by no means difficult for Toombs to fill in the channel in a very short time. Slowly but steadily the waters of the pool lifted as the obstructions in its channel forced the water toward the level of the old outlet.

While the man worked nervously, strenuously, and with such strength as he would never have been able to exhibit at ordinary times, Jimmie saw the dark face of Sigma appear at the opening. The Indian stood for an instant with folded hands as he saw what Toombs was doing.

“It’s all up with the fat Wall street man now!” Jimmie mused. “The Indians are wise to the fact that his only purpose in sending Sigma in was to bunch those possessing information of the mine and drown them all like a lot of baby cats. What they’ll do to him now will be a plenty. I wouldn’t be in his shoes for a good deal.”

So busily was Toombs engaged in his work that he did not hear the smothered ejaculations or the soft footsteps of the Indian as he crept up behind him. It was evident that he believed the Indians to be all massed in the gold chamber.

When, at last, he was seized in the muscular grasp of the Indian, the boy saw him smile, evidently trying to explain away his actions. Sigma shook his head and uttered a peculiar cry. The next moment seven Indians came from the entrance and gathered around the now crestfallen Wall street man.

There was not much talk. In fact, Jimmie could not hear a word that was spoken. All he knew was that there was no delay. The Indians took up the work of filling the channel which Toombs had begun. Then, when it was quite full and the water was roaring and swirling into the entrance so recently vacated, they bound Toombs hand and foot and cast him into the torrent.

Jimmie gave a low groan of horror and turned away. He knew that Toombs fully deserved his fate. Still, his punishment seemed to be a brutal one. He knew that the mangled body of the unfortunate man would be swept from level to level and from rock to rock until it came to the round aperture in the floor which carried the water straight down for how many hundred feet no one could estimate.

He knew that in time the Indians would find a way of getting out the gold unless the corporation represented by Jack’s father should take advantage of the information secured by the Boy Scouts and get the gold in advance. He knew, too, that Toombs’ craving for gold would at last be satisfied. For a long time his body would swing about in eddys which whirled about heaps of gold worthy a king’s ransom.

“Serves him just right!” the boy mused as he turned away. “He was the crookedest man that ever lived. And now,” he added with a sigh, “I’ll get back to camp and see if the boys have been cooking anything more to eat.”

When he reached the camp, a great kettle of bear stew was simmering over the fire, and Frank and Jack were explaining to Mr. Bosworth the story of the night and telling of the discovery of the wonderful deposit of gold in the vicinity of the Devil’s Punch Bowl. The capitalist seemed overjoyed at the success of the expedition, and when Jimmie, in a voice not very strong, described the death of Toombs and the re-flooding of the mine, the silence was broken only by exclamations of pity for the man whose greed had led him to such a frightful death.

“But how are we going to get this gold out, now that the mine is flooded?” asked Mr. Bosworth.

“Huh,” grinned Jimmie, “guess we can unflood it. I could do it myself with a good big shovel.”

“I presume the Indians will change the course of the outlet as soon as they find some willing to market the gold for them,” suggested Ned.

“We have not the least intention in the world of robbing the Indians of all the wealth,” Mr. Bosworth declared. “On the contrary, we’ll get the gold out and give them a fair share of the proceeds of the mine. After dinner, we’ll go up and negotiate with them.”

“I hope you’ll send me back to New York immediately,” pleaded Gilroy, turning to his employer.

“We’ll all be going out directly,” was the reply.

“Now, look here!” Jimmie declared. “We came in here for a vacation, and we’ve been mixed up with half-breeds, and Indians, and bears, and old Franciscan missions, built underground, and pots of gold at the rainbow’s end, and a thousand other things that haven’t given us much joy. Now I propose that we stay here and have our visit to the mountains out after all this mess is cleared up.”

“I’ve got a bum arm,” Harry exclaimed, “but I vote for staying in the hills a month. If I can’t climb trees and send Boy Scout signals floating over the mountain tops,” he added with a laugh, “I can sit here and broil bear steaks and have all the fun in the world seeing you boys eating them. That will be fun enough for me!”

“Besides,” he went on with an amusing grin, “I want to stay here long enough to make the personal acquaintance of that flag on the cliff—the flag of Spain, without any yellow in it, that stands for a billion of yellow metal not far away!”

“The flag on the cliff?” repeated Mr. Bosworth.

“Sure,” replied Jimmie. “There has been a stone flag waving on the cliff over the old mine for two or three hundred years. It isn’t much of a flag to look at, but it represents the kingdom of Spain, crown and all, and the old Indians loved it because they knew of the treasure it guarded.”

“Then our first visit,” Mr. Bosworth declared, “shall be to the flag on the cliff!”