He looked around at the struggling little beasts, who were slipping and sliding over the treacherous slate and granite formation underfoot. Their hoofs had been worn smooth as glass. One of them had become lame and part of its burden had been transferred to the other ponies and to the weary, chafed shoulders of the boys.
Since morning the two packers, Lee and Pierre, had shown the first symptoms of open rebellion. Neither one could speak English, so their complaints came to Dick and Sandy through the medium of Toma, who acted as interpreter.
“Them fellows say ponies die if no find grass pretty quick. Ponies so weak now can hardly stand up.”
It was true. There was no grass, or so very little, that it provided but scant nourishment for the plodding, overworked animals. The soil was not productive. Indeed, so far as the boys could determine, there was no vegetation at all in that bleak and unfriendly waste. Dick and Sandy pitied the horses but were powerless to do anything.
“Before long we’ll come to a place where the grass grows,” Dick stated, attempting to cheer the packers.
Toma conveyed this message to the glowering pair but without result.
“They say no think so. Many, many miles yet before we reach ’em place where grass grows.”
“The fools! The fools!” stormed Sandy, stamping his feet and glaring about him. “What do they expect us to do: shoot the horses or manufacture a lot of grass. The horses would surely starve if we turned back now. Ask them what they want us to do, Toma?”
“They say go on no good,” Toma replied patiently, after he had put the question. “Fellows say we must go back or pretty soon we all die. Fellows say this bad medicine land.”
“Bad medicine or not, I’m going to take it,” exploded Sandy. “You tell them, Toma, that if they don’t like our company or the place we’re going, they’re at perfect liberty to quit, like the miserable cowards they are, and return to the post.”
“No! No! Don’t tell them that,” Dick quickly interposed. “Ask them to remain with us for a day or two longer. We’ll be sure to find forage for the ponies before long.”
The packers protested but finally consented to remain. The little party pushed forward. On and on It went through the glaring sunlight that fell across that indescribable waste, Lee and Pierre shaking their heads and muttering to themselves. Just before nightfall, Dick and Toma, who were well in advance of the others, led the way down to a deep gulch, a sort of miniature canyon, that stretched away before them as far as the eye could see.
A few miles farther on, a tiny stream of pure, cold water gurgled down from a cleft in the rocks.
“Grass here!” Toma shouted. “Plenty grass here for many horses.”
Dick breathed a sigh of relief as he unslung his shoulder-pack. The horses came up at a brisk trot. Sandy, foot-sore and weary, the last person to reach the friendly oasis in that desert of rocks, grinned at sight of the green velvety strip that carpeted the entire floor of the gulch.
“They’ll gorge themselves and die of colic,” he predicted. “Just look at them, Dick!”
Dick laughed as he looked, then stepped back quickly, every ounce of blood gone from his face. A strange whirring sound through the air, and something had whisked past his head, striking the ground not more than ten feet behind him. One of the ponies had snorted in sudden fear, and Lee, the packer, reached out, plucking the still quivering shaft from the ground at his feet.
Toma, ever on the alert, was the first to take the queer missile from the packer’s trembling grasp.
“Look!” he said, holding it up. “An arrow!”
An arrow it was—a yellow arrow with a long shaft and a sharp head. Dick and Sandy regarded it for a moment in blank amazement. Then both of the boys jumped as a sudden, deafening report rang out.
Toma had fired his rifle. It lay now in the crook of his arm, and Toma himself, one hand shading his eyes, scanned the rugged cliffs on the opposite side of the ravine.
“Did you see something?” Dick quavered.
“Me not sure,” Toma spoke calmly. “One time I thought see something move. Mebbe only sun shining on rocks. Anyway,” he paused, smiling a little, “him fellow shoot arrow be frightened now at big noise an’ run away, I think.”
“I hope so,” said Dick, endeavoring to control the tremor in his voice and trying to appear unconcerned.
Sandy’s face was pale but he said nothing as he walked over to the supply packs and commenced to haul them out in preparation for supper.
On the following morning, when Dick awoke, there was no sign, no indication anywhere of their mysterious enemy of the night before. In the bright presence of a new day, it seemed scarcely possible that the thing really could have happened. The fear and dread he had experienced before retiring for the night, was gone. The bright rays of the sun were friendly and reassuring. There was something peaceful and comforting in the sight of the green strip of grass growing there in the ravine, and in the sound of the water tumbling down from the rocks.
Lighted-heartedly, he threw back his blankets and jumped up, only to meet the troubled gaze of Toma, who sat, fully dressed, a few feet away, his rifle in his lap.
“What’s the matter, Toma?” Dick cried jovially. “You look as if you’d lost your best friend.”
The guide replied by pointing in the direction of the pack-horses. Dick turned his head quickly. A few feet away, two of the ponies were munching the grass, straining at their picket ropes.
“Where’s the other one?” he asked.
“It go along with Lee and Pierre sometime last night,” Toma answered disconsolately. “Them fellows ’fraid like coyotes. Take supplies along too—nearly half. What you think about that?”
What Dick thought was best expressed in his sudden exclamation:
“The miserable, cowardly thieves! Toma, I’ve a mind to go and fetch ’em back.”
“No catch ’em now,” pointed out the more practical Toma. “I no feel sorry very much they go. But the supplies—I no like that.”
“You’re right! Good riddance!” Dick walked over to the small stream of running water and commenced washing his face and hands. “We’ll make out very well without them.”
“I hate wake Sandy,” said Toma. “Him get so mad mebbe no stop talking.”
Dick laughed, not so very heartily, and went on with his task.
On the afternoon of the day following the disappearance of the two packers, the ravine narrowed down to a mere gully, and the three boys, leading the pack-horses, scrambled up the precipitous slope to find themselves looking out across a broad and fertile meadow.
Off in the northwest, a low-lying haze or ribbon of mist indicated the presence of a body of water.
“It’s probably Thunder River,” Dick surmised. “According to the map, there’s no other stream of any importance we have to cross. That means, Sandy, that we must be very close to the end of our journey.”
Sandy raised one hand and clapped Dick on the back as he spoke.
“I’m glad for all of us. But I must say, Dick, that this trip hasn’t been so unendurable after all. On the whole, I’ve rather enjoyed it.”
“With the exception of the arrow and the disappearance of those cowardly packers, I’ve enjoyed it too,” said Dick.
“Queer about that arrow,” mused Sandy, as they started off again. “You know, Dick, I’ve been thinking a good deal about that ever since it happened. It’s so terribly mysterious. I wonder who shot it?”
He paused for a moment as he hurried forward to keep abreast of his much swifter companion.
“Do you suppose,” he resumed, “that the person who shot the arrow intended to kill one of us, or merely wanted to give us a good fright?”
“I hold to the former view,” Dick answered a little grimly. “I don’t think there’s the least doubt on that score. The arrow missed my head by less than a foot, and nearly caught Lee in his right leg.”
“A good shot all right,” Sandy mumbled, half to himself. “Whoever fired it, was a marksman. He knew his business. It was an Indian, of course.”
“Yes, it must have been.”
Sandy raised his voice so that the guide, who was leading the pack-ponies, could hear.
“Toma, how does it happen that some of the Indians around here still use a bow and arrow. I thought that all of them went to the trading posts now to buy rifles. How do you account for it?”
“Not all buy rifles,” Toma enlightened him. “Once in a while far away from trading post like this, you find wild people, mebbe not more than once or twice see white men. These Indians very much afraid white man’s guns. No come very close to settlements or trade at post. These people not many—only few tribes left.”
“Yes,” said Dick, “I remember hearing something like that before. Possibly, it was from Corporal Richardson.”
“Well, I know this much,” Sandy broke in, “I’d much rather have them to contend with than the outlaws under Henderson.”
“Mebbe have both very soon,” predicted Toma.
“Great Guns! I hope not!” Sandy’s alarm was genuine. “I’ve had enough of Henderson to last me all the rest of my days. I’m really beginning to believe, though, that we’ve seen the last of him. At any rate, I don’t think he’s going to bother us any more about the mine.”
“It has commenced to look that way,” Dick agreed. “But I think we can account for it. Corporal Richardson and Malemute Slade are keeping them so busy, they haven’t time to come up here to worry us.”
“Still,” Sandy reflected, “I don’t believe Henderson will give up so easily. They know about the mine and will do everything possible to gain control of it. The outlaws will be in a dangerous mood now after losing the fur.”
Toma did not, as a general thing, enter into the discussions Dick and Sandy so often indulged in. But he was an attentive listener at all times, very rarely failing to understand what was being said. In the present instance so interested had he become, that he quite forgot his usual taciturnity.
“What you think, Dick,” he suddenly broke forth, “if I tell you Henderson’s men him close to us all the time since we left post? You believe me crazy fool, eh?”
Dick was so startled by the question that he stopped dead in his tracks and stared curiously at the young Indian.
“Why—why,” he stammered, “I don’t know. I don’t know what to think. But you’re spoofing me, Toma. It isn’t reasonable, of course.”
“I think,” Toma was in deadly earnest, “that Henderson send men to follow us when we left post. Right now, Henderson’s men in hiding close by. You see if Toma not speak you the truth.”
Sandy laughed in derision.
“That’s a good one! If Henderson is within fifty miles of us right now, I’ll undertake to eat our two pack-horses for supper.”
Toma flushed with embarrassment, but still held stubbornly to his belief. Sandy’s laughter and Dick’s sceptical smile had not influenced him in the least.
“You see if Toma not speak the truth,” he said doggedly.
“What I want to know,” Sandy taunted him, “is if a change in the weather wouldn’t make you feel better. Perhaps a little rain would freshen your mind, Toma. This everlasting sunlight is getting the better of you.”
“If the outlaws have really been following us,” inquired Dick, scowling darkly at Sandy, “why haven’t we heard from them before? Why haven’t we been attacked? If what you say is true, Toma, Henderson has decided to be a good man instead of the rascal we have always known.”
“Henderson him bad, but very smart fellow,” said the guide. “He shoot you, me, Sandy, in one minute if he like. But he no like because if he shoot us he mebbe lose mine.”
“You mean——”
“Much more easy, much better for him to follow along ’till we find mine ourselves. Then he take it away from us. More sense do thing like that than kill you, me, Sandy, when not know for sure if we have map.”
Sandy’s smile suddenly faded away.
“By George, you’re right! Toma, I’ll take back everything I just said—with some interest added.”
“Then, according to your belief,” said Dick, “we have nothing to fear until we have located the mine?”
“No. Only men with arrows bother us now. Me pretty sure Henderson keep out of sight. He no want us suspect anything when he get ready take mine.”
“How long have you had this suspicion in your mind,” quizzed Dick, “and why didn’t you tell us before?”
“I think same as you an’ Sandy until last night,” came the startling revelation. “Them fellow, Lee an’ Pierre, go off like that make me worry. First I think all same you an’ Sandy. I say to me: ‘Toma, them fellow run away because this bad medicine land an’ because they ’fraid get killed Indian arrows.’
“But more I think like that the more not sure I get all the time. Lee an’ Pierre have ’em more sense mebbe. Not so crazy fool after all. Both them packers I know for long, long time. Lee pretty good fellow, but Pierre get drunk, gamble—not so good like Lee.”
“What in Sam Hill are you driving at?” interrupted Sandy impatiently. “I fail to see what they have to do with it. We were talking about Henderson—not about the packers.”
“You understand pretty quick,” said Toma, reaching in his pocket and bringing forth a crisp ten-dollar bill. “I find that in the grass next morning Lee an’ Pierre run away.”
“One of them lost it,” reasoned Sandy, “but I fail to see——”
“I find the money an’ pick it up,” Toma went on, ignoring Sandy’s remark. “Then I forget all about it, because I get me so excited they steal supplies an’ run away. But bye-’n’-bye, I start think about that money. I remember Pierre he say to me one day: ‘Toma,’ he say, ‘me, Lee like play poker some night but no got money.’ He ask me lend him money so him an’ Lee play poker.”
“He must have lied to you,” said Dick.
Toma shook his head.
“Me no think so. He no lie that time. Pierre an’ Lee get money from somewhere else.”
Dick jumped.
“From Henderson!” he exclaimed.
The Indian nodded in the affirmative.
“Me pretty sure Henderson man come during night, wake up Lee an’ Pierre an’ give money so they run away. In the dark, they drop money in grass an’ no find this one.”
Sandy turned mournful, accusing eyes upon Toma. Dejectedly, he kicked the turf at his feet.
“That’s always the way,” he lamented. “The minute I begin to feel happy and contented, something like this comes along to upset me. I believe Toma now. This business about the money has so thoroughly convinced me, Dick, that I wouldn’t be surprised if Henderson himself should step out of that clump of bushes over yonder and tell us to throw up our hands.”
“We’ll keep guard every night now,” Dick decided. “Whatever happens, we’ll be ready for them.”
“Perhaps we ought to camp here and wait for Uncle Walter,” Sandy suggested. “I don’t mind confessing to both of you that I’m scared stiff. Between the Indians and their arrows and Henderson and his guns, I predict that we’re going to have a hot time of it.”
“I think we be all right ’till we get to mine,” said Toma. “No use stop here.”
“What do you propose, Dick?”
“I don’t know what to say,” Dick confessed. “Three or four weeks is a long time to wait for reinforcements. Even then we’ll probably be outnumbered. It’s rather difficult to decide. Perhaps you’d like to give up altogether, Sandy, and return to the post.”
Sandy’s face flamed a bright crimson.
“Are you trying to insult me—or what!” he demanded hotly.
“Of course not. I mean it. It’s no crime to run away if the job is too big for us. I’m not doubting your courage.”
“I’ll die and rot in my tracks before I go back to the post. If that’s what you’re figuring on doing, go ahead.”
For a full minute the two boys stood, face to face, breathing heavily. There was a gleam of defiance in Sandy’s eyes, while Dick’s face had become overshadowed with anger. Toma dropped the end of the lead-rope carefully on the ground and placed one foot on it. Then he straightened up, putting a hand on the shoulder of each one of the young belligerents.
“No fight here,” he grinned. “Dick, Sandy, you come with me. Toma show you nice place where fight all time, day an’ night. Mebbe you like that better.”
Dick and Sandy glared at each other for a moment, then grinned sheepishly. The matter was settled. They would go on to the mine.
Thunder River at last! Like most northern streams it had cut its channel deeply into the earth, through soil, rock and sandstone, and the result now, after ages of this corrosive action, was a deep canyon at the bottom of which roared and tumbled the mighty river.
Spring floods, caused by melting snow and ice in the hills and mountains to the west, had made a veritable torrent of the river, and Dick, Toma and Sandy, looking down at the racing, foam-capped waters, were a little dubious about crossing it.
“We’ll never get the horses over at any rate,” Dick decided. “There’s no animal living that can swim against that current. It simply can’t be done.”
“No,” agreed Sandy, “it can’t. And I very much doubt whether we can get across ourselves. It looks to me as if the strongest raft in the world would be dashed to pieces against those rocks in a very few minutes. What do you think, Toma?”
For once, apparently, their guide was at a complete loss to know what to say. He frowned as he looked down below.
“I never see river so bad like that before,” he admitted, shaking his head.
“If Toma thinks it’s bad, it must be pretty bad indeed,” laughed Dick. “How are we going to cross it, I wonder?”
“We no cross here,” said Toma, “but mebbe we find better place somewhere else.”
Acting upon this suggestion, they started out. They followed the river for several miles, making their way along the comparatively level ground that skirted the edge of the canyon. At the end of an hour, they paused in dismay.
“It seems to be getting worse instead of better,” complained Sandy. “It’s hopeless. I don’t believe we’re going to get over.”
“We’ve got to do it somehow,” Dick gritted his teeth. “Let’s make camp here, stake out the ponies and go after this thing systematically. Sandy and I will return to the place we just came from and scout further up the river, while you, Toma, go on in the other direction. We’ll meet back here sometime before evening.”
“All right,” said Toma, “I think that good idea. We pretty sure find some place not quite so bad. Then we build raft.”
“But what about the ponies?” Sandy wanted to know.
“They’ll be safe enough here.”
“I don’t mean that, Dick. What are we going to do when we build the raft? We can’t take pack-horses along with us.”
“We can take the packs along,” reasoned Dick, “and that’s almost as important. We’ll turn the ponies loose and let them shift for themselves.”
“But we can’t carry all our supplies with us when we do get over. It’s impossible. We can’t do it.”
“No,” admitted Dick, very much perplexed. “We can’t.”
“We make ’em cache for supplies,” Toma suggested. “We carry ’em over to mine, little at a time.”
“That’s the only solution, I suppose,” said Sandy, “but it’s sure to be a whale of a job. How’ll you like to climb up those slippery rocks with a hundred pounds on your back? Another thing, how far do you think it is from the other side of the river to the mine?”
Dick produced the map, while Sandy and Toma gathered around him.
“It doesn’t say how far it is,” Dick stated, as he unfolded the now soiled piece of paper. “But it isn’t so very far because the cross, indicating its position, is very close to the river.”
“That doesn’t mean anything,” Sandy turned away in disgust. “How do we know at what point along the river the mine is? We may be fifteen or twenty miles out of our course, for all you know. The place where we cross may be miles and miles away from the mine.”
Dick placed an agitated finger on the map and bit his lips in vexation. Sandy was right. How could they possibly find the mine unless they knew at least approximately at what point along the river it was situated? And then, suddenly, staring at the paper in his hand, he became aware of something he had not noticed before. Across the upper portion of the map, Thunder River was indicated by a line, a fairly straight line throughout its entire length. A casual or fleeting look at the line brought out nothing of importance, but a close and careful examination showed that, midway between the source and mouth of the river, there was a tiny loop or bow. Within this bow, on the opposite or upper side of the line, was the “X,” which showed the location of the mine.
“I’ve got it!” Dick shouted. “There’s an abrupt curve in the river at only one place—opposite the mine. When we find that curve, we’ll know where to cross.”
Sandy took the map from his friend and inspected it closely, silently.
“Yes, the curve is there,” he was forced to admit. “And it ought to simplify matters, too. The next thing on our program is to find it.”
“Why not do as I just proposed,” said Dick. “While we’re hunting for a place to cross, we may find the bow.”
It seemed about the only thing to do under the circumstances. In a short time the boys had staked out the ponies, and had picked up their rifles in preparation for departure. Toma, who had been looking about, suddenly exclaimed:
“I have good idea. I climb big, tall tree over there an’ mebbe I find out where river makes turn. I go up see.”
He crossed over to the tree at a brisk trot and commenced climbing up. It was a huge, towering spruce, and it was several minutes before he reached the top.
“Do you see anything?” shouted Sandy.
Toma clung to the topmost branches, swaying there nearly seventy-five feet above their heads, a dark blur against a background of blue sky. He made no answer to Sandy’s shouted inquiry, in fact refusing to divulge any information until he had clambered down again and stood there on the knoll beside them.
“I find ’em curve all right,” he announced gleefully, brushing away the fragments of bark which clung to his clothing. “You laugh when I tell you only two miles down river. I see very plain from top of tree. River come out on this side nearly quarter-mile before it turn go back again.”
Sandy clapped his hands joyfully.
“What luck! Toma, you old rascal.”
“I find out something else too,” continued the guide, pleased at the impression he was making. “In place where river turns, I see another big ravine where river flow long time ago. Mebbe it just about place where you find ’em mine.”
Waiting to hear no more, Sandy, overcome with a fever of excitement, rushed over to the pack-horses again.
“Let’s hurry,” he called, beginning to gather up their supplies.
“Come on, Dick, get a move on! Toma, you’ll have to pack these brutes yourself. I never could throw a diamond hitch. Gee, but I’m excited.”
Dick had never seen Sandy quite like this before. His chum’s face was flushed; his eyes glowed brightly.
“We’ll get to the mine tonight,” he exulted. “Throw on these packs, Toma. If we can’t cross the river any other way, I’m going to swim.”
The contagion had caught Dick, too. His own hands were trembling as he stooped down to untie the picket-rope from the stake he had driven down only a few minutes before.
“This is great!” he mumbled to himself. “We’re almost there. I can hardly believe—”
The pony, only a few feet away, reared suddenly on its hind legs, screaming in pain. The stake snapped under Dick’s hands and the rope swished away in the grass as the stricken little beast leaped forward a few feet, then fell headlong.
Completely taken aback, Dick raised his head. Sandy and Toma had flattened themselves out on the ground and were reaching for their rifles. A series of sounds very much like small rocks thudding around them, was followed soon after by a deep, resounding crash from the direction of Toma and Sandy. A few more reports from Toma’s gun, and the deep, brooding hush of the wilderness became suddenly intensified—a silence that seemed to wall them about, to encompass them.
Three startled, white-faced youths crawled on hands and knees to the protection of a large rock and squatted down in mute terror. By some wonderful miracle, each had escaped injury. A score or more of yellow-plumed shafts; the arrows of the invading party, projected here and there above the green grass, like so many tiny sentinels of death.
“A close call,” breathed Dick, “and may God help us if they come back.”
“They were all in hiding over there on that ridge,” Sandy volunteered the information, pointing out the place with a finger that still shook. “I didn’t see one of them—not one! Did you, Toma?”
“No.”
“Cracky! but how those arrows came,” Sandy shivered. “Well, our pony’s gone.”
“We go too,” said Toma, “unless we be more careful. Crazy, them fellows! What harm we do them?”
“No harm,” answered Dick, “unless they feel we’ve no business here on their hunting ground. We are trespassing, when it comes right down to it.”
“This bad medicine land,” Toma asserted. “That’s why free traders no come here. Once in a while mebbe come but never go back.”
“Be quiet!” Sandy expostulated. “I’m feeling creepy enough now. Those Indians steal up on us and disappear again like ghosts. It takes the nerve right out of me.”
“Me too,” said Dick, “but hereafter I, for one, intend to be ready for them. At least, I don’t purpose to be asleep when they come over for their next raid. And I’m going to keep my eyes open as I never kept them open before.”
“Well, we weren’t exactly asleep,” objected Sandy.
“We might just as well have been. I’ll bet that any one of their party could have walked over here and taken a scalp before we would have noticed him.”
Toma rose warily and went over to the packs.
“I think no more danger now,” he called. “We better hurry before dark comes. Lots of work build raft over at river.”
“We’ll have to make two trips down there,” Dick suddenly remembered. “We’ve only one pony now.”
The remainder of the afternoon was passed in getting their supplies to the river. This task was accomplished with the greatest care possible. Sandy led the pack-horse, while Dick and Toma went forward, rifles in hand, ever on the alert. In dead silence, they scanned the woods to the right and left for a possible sign of their recent enemy.
One piece of good fortune came with the discovery of a safe crossing place in the river. Toma had found it after a half hour of reconnoitring, while Dick and Sandy awaited his return on the steep slope, near the top of the canyon.
“Mebbe we swim pony across in the morning,” he confided, smiling for the first time in several hours. “River wide an’ very few rapids. Find ’em plenty easy for raft.”
With Dick standing guard, the raft was built that same night, and, on the following morning, supplies and equipment aboard, they were ready for the crossing.
“The thing to do first,” said Sandy, scratching his head, “is to get our little playmate, Sir Bucking Broncho, into the water. How do we go about it, Toma?”
Toma led the pony down to the water’s edge and coaxed and cajoled the little beast but to no avail. The horse sniffed, snorted, swung around this way and that, but refused stubbornly to do more than wet his front fetlocks at the brink of the running stream. He was a good pony, but he was taking no chances.
Dick laughed in spite of himself, although the delay was irksome.
“I don’t know as I blame him very much. The water does look cold and it’s a long way across. Perhaps, we’ll have to leave him on this side after all. Do you suppose the three of us could push him in?”
The pack-horse not only refused to be pushed, but resented the liberty taken. A glancing blow sent Sandy reeling back and deposited him, none too gently, in the exact center of a willow copse, where he sat for a moment with a surprised look on his face. The look of surprise changed to one of anger as there came to his ears the loud guffaws of Dick and Toma.
“Laugh if you want to,” said the aggrieved young man, rising and brushing his clothing. “It may interest you to know that I’m through. You fellows can do your pushing alone.”
The merriment subsided presently and Dick turned to Toma.
“I guess we’ll have to give up,” he decided, wiping the tears of laughter from his eyes. “Your friend, has plainly indicated his intention of remaining on this side. Perhaps he doesn’t like your company, Sandy.”
“And perhaps he does,” Sandy retorted promptly. “I’m blaming you, not the pony. Any idiot ought to know that that’s no way to treat a horse.”
“If you like, you can coax him over with a lump of sugar,” Dick grinned.
Sandy turned his back upon his tormenter.
“Go ahead and don’t mind me. Why don’t you put your own vast intelligence to work in some practical way? I wouldn’t give up if I were you.”
“I try once more,” Toma suddenly announced. “I think this time I make pony swim across. You, Dick, Sandy, stand on raft ready push off jes’ so soon as I get in water.”
“Get in water!” cried Dick in alarm. “Why you’re not going to swim, are you?”
“Watch!—See!”
Toma walked back, leading the horse. Thirty feet from the shore he bolted to the pony’s bare back, wheeled the animal abruptly about, and came forward at a brisk trot. Dick and Sandy jumped aboard the raft, poles in hand, ready to push off. At the river’s edge the pony hesitated, but a quick pressure from Toma’s heels sent him plunging into the water. A second later steed and rider struck out boldly for the opposite shore.
As the raft came abreast of the two swimmers, Toma released his hold of the pony’s mane and, lead-rope in hand, scrambled aboard.
“Like clock work,” exulted Sandy, slapping Toma’s dripping shoulders. “You’re a wonder, Toma, and there’s no mistake about that. Even Dick would never have dared to pull a stunt like that.”
“You’re right,” Dick returned good-naturedly, “I never would.”
The crossing was made without mishap. As the craft glided up to the rocky shore, Dick and Sandy cheered lustily.
“Before we do anything more,” said Dick a few minutes later, when they had unloaded the raft, “I think we had better decide upon some definite course of action. Unless this map and everything connected with it is a hoax, we are now within a few miles of the mine.”
“Yes,” said Sandy.
“Well,” Dick continued, “we are all very anxious to find it. From now on our search must be painstaking and we musn’t waste any more time than is absolutely necessary.”
“Of course,” Sandy agreed, “but where are we going to look first?”
“That’s a question we’d better decide right away. The place where we’re standing now,” Dick made a sweeping gesture with his arm, “seems to form one end of a more or less oval space, which lies between the river on one side and the dry canyon or ravine on the other.
“The mine,” he went on slowly, “may be located in any one of a number of likely places. It may be in the oval, stretching away behind us, or in the ravine, or somewhere on the other side of the ravine. In which of these places are we going to search first?”
“The ravine,” said Sandy. “I believe we’ll be more apt to find the mine there.”
“I think ravine too,” Toma agreed with him. “What you say we make camp here while we look for mine? No use take supplies an’ pony along everywhere we go.”
“That’s a good suggestion. This will be our base, which we can always come back to. Anyway, it won’t take more than an hour or two to travel through the ravine from one end to the other. If the mine’s there, we’ll be sure to find it in a very short time.”
“There’s one thing I don’t like about this arrangement,” Sandy pointed out. “If we make our base here—which seems a pretty good idea—aren’t we running the chance of losing everything? In our absence the Indians could easily slip down here and steal it all. Put us in a nice pickle, wouldn’t it?”
“It would!” Dick declared most emphatically. “One of us will have to remain here, that’s all.”
“Which one of us?”
The three boys looked at each other. It was quite apparent from the expression on the face of each, that none of them wished to remain behind. To go and look for the gold mine was much more interesting and exciting.
“I guess we’ll have to draw straws,” Dick grinned.
“That’s fair enough,” Sandy broke off a twig as he spoke.
He divided the twig in three small pieces—one shorter than the rest. He turned his back as he arranged them in his hand.
The unpleasant choice of remaining to guard the camp fell to Dick. For a moment his face clouded with disappointment as he gazed at the tell-tale straw.
“O well,” he comforted himself, “I’ll have my chance later on.”
Sandy and Toma rose joyfully to their feet, slung on their shoulder-packs and otherwise prepared for an immediate departure.
“We’ll be back before lunch time,” Sandy sang out, as the two made their way across the comparatively level piece of ground, and headed for the ravine.
“Good luck!” shouted Dick.
A few moments later they had disappeared.
“I hope they find it,” Dick mused, turning away. “Sandy will be overjoyed.”
He walked back to the packs, his thoughts in a whirl of excitement. A few feet away the packhorse grazed contentedly. The camp, since the departure of his two friends, had become strangely quiet. There was only the sound of the river to break the heavy, all-pervading silence.
Digging down in one of the packs, Dick brought forth presently a hook and line and afterward, cutting a pole from a clump of bushes and procuring a small piece of moose meat for bait, he turned his attention to the river.
Dick loved to fish and on this particular morning luck was with him. The water swarmed with trout. In less than twenty minutes he had pulled out a good two-days’ supply of them.
“It doesn’t require a great amount of skill to do this,” he informed himself, throwing out his line for the last time. “If I had a hay fork, I believe I could pitch ’em out by the ton. Great Caesar! What’s that!”
A quick splashing in the water on the opposite shore had drawn his attention, caused him to straighten up in sudden alarm.
“A moose!” he ejaculated, breathing his relief. “I thought maybe it was something else.”
He stood perfectly still as the majestic swimmer came on.
“I can’t shoot him—I can’t!” decided Dick, his admiring gaze on the monarch of the northland forests, watching with bated breath as the splendid beast continued its course across the murky, discolored stream. “Anyway,” he continued, “it wouldn’t be fair to take an advantage like that. Our larder is full of meat now.”
He actually turned his back a moment later as he rolled up his line, picked up the fish he had caught and walked back to the packs. Yet he swung about again when the moose plunged to shore, scarcely more than a hundred feet away. Head raised high, the magnificent animal struck out at a brisk trot and was soon lost to view.
“I’m glad I didn’t take a shot at him,” Dick breathed thankfully. “He was too wonderful.”
The morning wore on. It was eleven o’clock when Dick consulted his watch, and only a few minutes after when Toma and Sandy appeared. Haggard-eyed, faces gray with dust, they loped into camp and threw themselves down, gasping for breath.
“We’ve got to get out of here quick!” Sandy wheezed, turning a terror-stricken gaze upon his chum. “I’m fagged out.... Crawled a hundred yards on our bellies before we dared to get up and run.... We haven’t a moment to lose.”
“Why, Sandy, what do you mean?”
“They’re coming now!”
Sandy staggered to his feet; Toma raced to get the pony. It was not until the packs had been lifted and tied into place, that Dick was made aware of the danger which threatened them.
“Indian encampment over there in the ravine. Ran right into it. Dick, I’m afraid they saw us.”
Dick’s pulses quickened perceptibly as he received the disconcerting news.
“We’ll cross the river. Better there. Don’t bother with the pack-horse.”
“No, Toma thinks we’ll be safer among those high rocks behind us.”
As Dick paused for a brief space undecided, Toma seized the lead rope, motioning frantically.
“I see ’em first fellow already. Look out!”
He raced forward, pressed the lead-rope in Dick’s hands, then fell back to cover their retreat. His rifle roared intermittently as they made their way up the slope.
“Our chance is slim, but we may make it,” Sandy breathed in his chum’s ear. “You see, Dick, there’s the danger of being cut off. We may walk straight into a trap.”
“You think they may climb up from their side of the ravine and head us off.”
“Yes,” shuddered Sandy. “It will be sure to happen if we don’t hurry.”
“Encumbered as we are with this pony, I don’t see how we can hurry. The farther we go, the harder it’s going to be. We’ll never reach that high point of rocks up there at this rate.”
“Let’s wait here until Toma catches up with us. I think myself we’re risking our lives needlessly by taking the pony along. He’s too much of a hindrance.”
Toma came up and the situation was explained to him.