NIGHT ON THE COLORADO.
"What's the matter? What has happened?" cried Jack.
"Is it Indians?" cried Dick, who had a lively imagination.
"Something grabbed my foot," declared Tom.
"Grabbed your foot?" repeated Jack.
"Well, maybe, nibbled at it, would be better," replied Tom. "It isn't hurt, but I was awakened by it. I guess the thing, whatever it was, must have been scared away."
"What could it have been?" came from Dick.
"Perhaps it was a bear," suggested Tom.
"A bear, nonsense. I guess it was all imagination," scoffed Jack. "You ate too much at supper, Tom."
"It was not imagination, I tell you," retorted Tom indignantly. "I felt it just as plainly as anything."
"Well, I don't see what——" began Jack and then he broke off.
From outside the tent had come an appalling crash of tin dishes, followed by unearthly grunts and squeals. The uproar was terrific. It sounded as if every piece of tinware in the camp was being hurled and battered around.
"What under the sun——?" gasped Jack.
"It's Indians; they've attacked the camp," cried Dick.
A weird screech split the night. Jack seized up a rifle.
"Come on, boys," he cried, but it might have been noticed that Dick was not particularly alert in following.
Zeb and the professor rushed out of their tents and their shouts added to the confusion. There was a bright moon and by its light Jack saw a small, peculiarly-shaped animal charging about blindly here and there. The next minute he saw, too, that the creature's head was caught fast in an enameled cooking pot.
It rushed about and uttered the muffled squeals that had attracted their attention. Jack raised his rifle and fired. The creature fell dead at the first shot. Zeb and Jack rushed up to it.
"A badger!" exclaimed Zeb, "and he's got his greedy head stuck fast in that mush cooker."
"And in charging about trying to get it off he'd made a wreck of our pantry!" exclaimed Jack, looking at the tin utensils scattered in every direction about the wooden box in which they were kept.
"It must have been that badger that came sniffing at my toes," said Tom.
"Or maybe it was Indians," laughed Jack, looking slyly at Dick, who was glad that they couldn't see how red he turned.
"Indians?" exclaimed the professor guilelessly. "Were there any Indians about?"
"Dick thought he saw some," explained Jack with a chuckle.
The dead badger was pulled out of the pot into which it stuck its head to lick out the remains of some oatmeal that had adhered to its side, and the boys went back to bed. But they did not sleep much after the uproar into which the camp had been thrown, and were glad when it began to grow light.
Zeb cooked a fine breakfast to which he urged everybody to do justice, as they had a long and possibly a trying day ahead of them. The badger was given decent burial by Dick.
"Let its fate be a lesson to you," said Jack, at which they all laughed, for Dick was always on the spot at meal times.
When the morning meal was finished and the things all packed away, the Wondership was inflated and soared into the clear air. Nights and early mornings on the desert are cool, and it was crisp and invigorating in the hours before the sun had risen high. But by noon the heat grew blistering, and they were still soaring above the river without a trace of Rattlesnake Island being visible.
However, that afternoon they sighted a group of islands of which the largest at once attracted their attention. A prominent feature of Rattlesnake Island, as outlined on the map, was a big dead pine, situated like a beacon, at the summit of the peak into which the island rose.
The river at this point broadened out. Great cliffs overhung it. They were made up of strata of brilliant colors. It looked from above as if they had been painted by some titanic sign painter—nature, the artist.
Jack was the first to call attention to the island which had caught his eye while he scanned the river below them with the binoculars. He at once noticed its formation, long and narrow, with a high, rocky peak rising out from amongst trees and bushes which clothed it almost to the summit.
Then his eye caught a great white pine trunk, standing like a flagpole almost at the apex of the peak.
"Hurrah, boys!" he cried. "I guess that's the place. Welcome to Rattlesnake Island!"
Tom was steering, "spelling" Jack at the wheel.
"You can see the island?" he demanded.
"Yes, or if it isn't it, it's like enough to be its twin brother."
Everybody began to get excited. Zeb took the glasses and after a careful scrutiny and a reference to the map, declared that the island below them tallied in every way with its description.
"Then down we go," said Jack.
"All right," nodded Tom, who was almost as good an air pilot as his cousin.
The Wondership dropped rapidly. Soon they were immediately above the island, which was now seen to be rocky and precipitous, except at one end where there was a great open place, bare and desolate looking.
On the edges of this cleared spot, which looked swampy and unwholesome, were serried rows of trees, every one of which was dead as if from a blight, and offering with their gaunt, leafless branches a sharp contrast to the green leafiness of the rest of the island.
Jack scanned the place sharply as they dropped down and Tom prepared to land on the edge of the swamp. As they got closer to the ground, he suddenly became aware of something that caused him a sharp shock of surprise.
"Why there's somebody on the island!" he exclaimed.
"Somebody on the island?" echoed Zeb incredulously.
"Yes, or at least there's a dwelling place."
The boy pointed to a rude sort of shack built of logs and roofed with boughs, which stood on the edge of the cleared space.
"Great Methuselah!" ejaculated Zeb. "Can someone have stolen a march on us?"
"I don't know, but it looks queer, and see, there's a shovel. Somebody has been digging here."
"But who could it be?" demanded Tom, mystified.
"Gosh! Looks as if we've bin euchered after all," grumbled Zeb.
The Wondership came to earth at the edge of the lifeless-looking, bare space. They clambered out of the machine and stood on what was, undoubtedly, Rattlesnake Island, for every landmark on the map had been verified as they dropped.
They looked about them for a minute and then Zeb drew his revolver out of the holster and began idly twiddling the cylinder.
"I want ter make sure she's in workin' order," he said with a grim comprehension of the lips, "before we do any investigating."
THE ISLAND OF MYSTERY.
There was an air of oppression, hard to explain, about the island. But they all felt it. The boys were inclined to talk in whispers and even Dick Donovan's usual lively spirits seemed daunted. There was something about the blistered, barren look of the cleared space on the edge of which they had landed that gave them all an odd feeling of melancholy.
Zeb was the first to shake this off.
"Our first job," he said, "is to find out who is on the island and what they've been doing."
Here and there in the black, swampy-looking bare space, they could see where holes had been dug, but when they examined the spade, which Jack had seen from the Wondership as they descended, they found that it was rusty and had evidently not been used for a long time.
It was the same in the rude hut which they examined. Some rusty utensils and a few ragged old garments were all that was inside. The dust lay thick on the floor and a large squirrel leaped out of the roof as they entered.
"Well, whoever was on the island has moved on again," declared Zeb.
"Or died," said Jack in a low tone.
"Wa'al, what I say is," observed Zeb, "ther sooner we git at that what-yer-may-call-um stuff and get away agin, the better it'll be for all of us. There's suthin' about this island I don't like."
The others agreed, all except the professor, who, on hands and knees, was examining some rocks with his magnifying glass.
"Where shall we make camp?" asked Dick.
"I don't much fancy this side of the island, somehow," said Jack, "but we could pitch the tents on that little plateau up there and be comfortable and have a good view up and down the river at the same time."
And so it was arranged. Leaving the Wondership on the edge of the clearing, they made camp on the flat ledge of sandy soil interspersed with rocks that Jack had selected. From it they had a good view in both directions. Above them was a small island, and below them the river leaped and roared in a series of big rapids.
Their preparations for camping occupied all the afternoon. It was supper time when they had finished and everything was shipshape and comfortable. In the meantime Dick had wandered off with the rifle and returned with four good-sized rabbits and three squirrels which Zeb cooked into a savory stew.
They turned in early as they had all worked hard and were tired. Just what time it was that he awakened, Jack did not know. But he thought it was after midnight. Taking his watch he went to the door of the tent to look at it in the moonlight, as he did not wish to arouse the others by striking a light.
The moon flooded the island. Jack looked about him, enjoying the beauty of the scene. The cliffs were great masses of black and white and the rushing river gleamed like silver. He glanced toward the black waste, on the edge of which they left the Wondership. The next instant he uttered a startled exclamation. Above the bare patch of dark-colored earth tall white figures were dancing, gleaming in the moonlight.
Jack's heart gave a bound and he caught his breath for an instant. Then he felt inclined to laugh at his own fears. What he had taken for ghostly figures were columns of vapor writhing and twisting as they steamed upward from the bare end of the island. What caused them, Jack did not know. He noticed, too, that the whole patch of barren land glowed with a strange phosphorescence like rotted wood.
Fascinated by the spectacle, he stood gazing at it. There was something eerie about the dancing, pirouetting columns of vapor. They looked like a party of ghosts dancing a quadrille. They twisted and contorted and bowed and soared upward and sank again in a kind of rhythm.
"Gracious, this is a spooky sort of place," thought Jack. "I wonder what causes those wavering columns? Maybe some sort of hidden hot springs like the one the professor fell into. I know one thing, I don't like this island overmuch. As Zeb said, there is something queer about it—something in the air. I don't know what, but I for one won't be sorry when we leave it."
He fell to musing about his father waiting so many miles away for news of the discovery that was to rehabilitate his fortunes and place the radio telephone in the list of practical inventions that have created an epoch in the world's history.
"Poor old dad," he thought "After all, he's really having the most trying part of this thing. Waiting back there for he doesn't know what, and with nothing to do but wait. I wonder if we are going to succeed? We will, we must! But, supposing that the map was wrong and that——"
His musing broke off suddenly and he crouched forward watching intently. His eyes were staring wide-open and startled at the Wondership. Its bulk lay blackly against the faint, phosphorescent glow of the black barren.
Then he felt his scalp tighten and his mouth go dry while his heart seemed to stop for an instant and then pound furiously, shaking his frame.
For a second he had seen something that had almost startled him into a cry. A dark figure was creeping round the Wondership, crouched like an ape as it examined the craft.
The boy had hardly caught a glimpse of it before it vanished, gliding swiftly like an animal into the brush. Jack rubbed his eyes.
"Am I seeing things?" he asked himself, "but no, I'm positive, as sure as I stand here, that that was a human figure sneaking about down there. Who could it have been?"
Jack did not sleep much more that night. The thought that they were not alone on the island was a disquieting one.
THROUGH THE WOODS.
The next morning Jack watched his opportunity, and under the pretext of hunting, left camp after breakfast and made his way to the side of the Wondership. He wanted to examine the vicinity for footmarks. But he found none, which was not surprising, for the ground on which the craft had been brought to rest was hard and firm, and not likely to take on any impressions.
In the bright, sunny glow it was hard for the boy to believe that he had actually seen the mysterious figure in the moonlight. But although he tried to assure himself that he had been the victim of an illusion, and that he had mistaken the shadow of a waving tree branch for a man, Jack knew that he was not laboring under a mistake. He was certain he had seen rightly; but he decided, for the present, to say nothing to his companions about the events of the night.
Having failed to find any tracks round the Wondership, he started off through the trees on his hunt. He was traversing a small glade when, in a clump of flowering bushes, he heard a sudden scuffling noise.
Startled, he stopped. The sound came again and this time it was accompanied by a shrill scream as of some creature in pain. Jack parted the bushes and made his way through them. On the other side he came across a rabbit. The little creature was struggling violently and squealing with the peculiarly human screech that rabbits have when in pain.
The boy saw that it had been caught in some way and could not get away. Greatly mystified, he dropped to his knees beside it and the next instant solved the puzzle.
The rabbit was caught in a trap ingeniously made from pliable willow twigs and set in a "rabbit run." For a minute the full significance of his discovery did not dawn upon Jack. Then it came like a bolt from the blue.
Somebody on the island, other than themselves, had set that trap! Perhaps it was the strange, half-ape-like man he had seen by the Wondership the night before. The boy looked round him in the silent wood as if he half expected to see somebody watching him.
He was not afraid, but he felt that creepy feeling that accompanies the mysterious. Suddenly he recollected that he had left his rifle behind when he plunged into the bushes.
He remembered this when the desire came to him to put the rabbit out of its misery. It had been caught by the hind leg and had wrenched it out of joint in its frantic struggles to get free. Jack made his way back to where he had left his rifle. But when he got back to the trap ready to end the poor creature's life, the rabbit was not there!
The trap was empty!
Then he looked about him. The ground was covered with blood and fur as if the rabbit had been torn to pieces.
"Some animal," was his first thought. Then, on examining the trap, he found that the thong which had ensnared the rabbit had not been broken or torn loose as would have been the case had some wild creature pounced on the rabbit and dragged it off.
It had been untied!
Jack had just made this discovery when he noticed something fluttering from a thornbush. He was sure it had not been there before, for he had noted the surroundings of the trap carefully. He examined the object that had caught his attention. It was a bit of canvas, seemingly torn from a garment made of that material.
"Thereissomebody else on the island!" gasped Jack, looking round with white cheeks.
He clutched his rifle firmly. Looking about him he half expected to see some wild face peering at him out of parted bushes. But nothing of the sort happened. Feeling very uncomfortable, Jack came away from the place and made his way back to camp.
This time he made up his mind to confide in Zeb. The prospector was as mystified as Jack over the events of the night and the incident of the rabbit trap. But he was unable to throw any light on the affair.
"It might be an Indian," he said, "or——"
"It might be the man that built that hut and left the shovel sticking in that barren place down yonder," said Jack.
"In that case, wouldn't he be livin' in ther hut instead of snoopin' round the island?" asked Zeb.
This view seemed to be incontrovertible. At noon the professor, who had been scouting over the island looking for specimens which might give him some clue as to the mineral deposits they had come in search of, arrived in camp breathless and indignant.
"A joke's a joke," he said to the boys, "but this is going too far."
"What's the matter, professor?" asked Dick.
"Yes, what's happened?" asked Tom, who saw that the man of science was really angry, and for some reason blamed them for whatever had irritated him.
"As if you didn't know," declared the professor. "I set my bag of specimens down on a rock while I went to investigate a peculiar-looking formation."
"Well?" said Jack.
"Well, I heard a soft footstep and the crackling of some twigs. I looked round and my bag of specimens had gone. Now which of you boys played that foolish joke on me?"
"I'll give you my word we know nothing about it, professor," declared Tom. "Dick and I have been working all the morning unpacking stuff from the Wondership."
The professor looked at them incredulously.
"That's right," struck in Zeb, "they haven't been out of my sight."
"But—but," stammered the professor, "my dear sir, that bag of specimens didn't walk off, you know. Besides," he added, "I heard a human footfall distinctly."
"It may not have been the boys, though," spoke up Jack seriously.
"Indeed, who else then?" inquired the professor stiffly.
"An unwelcome neighbor," replied Jack. "We are not alone on this island."
"Not alone? What do you mean?" demanded the professor in thunderstruck tones.
"Just this, that there is someone else on it. Who or what it is I don't know."
And Jack went on to explain all that he had seen.
THE SECRET AT LAST.
Mysteries are always uncomfortable. As Jack proceeded with his narrative, Dick and Tom looked nervously about them. Even the boys' two elders looked grave. The presence of a man on the island was almost inexplicable. But Jack's story was so circumstantial that there was no room to suppose that he might be mistaken. Besides, he had the bit of canvas to show, the scrap that he had taken from the thornbush.
After dinner Tom and Dick resumed their work of unloading necessaries from the Wondership. Jack and the two elder members of the party discussed plans.
"You haven't found any trace of mineral-bearing rock yet, have you, professor?" asked Jack.
The professor shook his head.
"Not a speck of anything that even remotely corresponds with the black sand that Zeb brought East with him," said the man of science, dejectedly.
"It isn't possible that we have been fooled," said Zeb.
"Or landed on the wrong island," struck in Jack.
"It must be the right island," declared Zeb.
"How do you make that out?" asked Jack.
"Well, it's got every mark on it that the map gives, for one thing," said Zeb.
"That's so," agreed the professor, and then he added hopefully: "However, I haven't covered half the ground yet."
Tom and Dick came tramping back at that juncture. They carried some canned goods and Dick bore the rusty shovel that they had seen the day before sticking up in the black barren.
"It was sticky and moist out there," he said, "but I figured we could always use this shovel, so I went out and brought it along."
He flung himself down full length in the shade for it was hot and there was not a breath of wind to fan the canyon. The professor, who sat facing Dick, concentrated his attention for an instant on the soles of the youngster's boots. Then he leaped up with a yell that startled them.
"What is it? The wild man?" gasped Dick, looking round him in alarm.
"No, your boots, your boots; look at them!" cried the professor.
"Is there a snake on them?" cried Dick, preparing to jump up.
"Don't move! Don't move for your life!" fairly screamed the dumpy little geologist, springing forward. He fell on his knees at Dick's boots as if they had been sacred, and with trembling fingers flaked off, into his left palm, some black mud which stuck to them.
Then he stood erect, his face aglow with triumph and enthusiasm such as the man of science rarely permitted himself.
"Gentlemen," he said, with a flourish, "there is no reason to look further for the mineral-bearing ground."
"You have found it?" choked out Jack.
"Yes."
"Where?"
"On Dick Donovan's boots."
They looked at him as if they thought he had suddenly gone demented. Dick examined his boots carefully as if he expected to see money plastered all over them.
The professor extended his palm. In it lay the black earth he had scraped from Dick's boots. In it tiny particles glittered and gleamed like myriads of infinitesimal eyes.
"Z. 2. X.," said the professor in solemn tones, and he waved his hand down toward the black barren where the moist, unhealthy-looking bare patch lay quivering and sweltering in the sun. A kind of haze hung above it, like a very thin fog.
"There it is," he went on, "down there. Waiting to be extracted from that black earth. Look."
He shook the black earth from his palm. Where it had lain there was a red, irritated-looking patch. The professor showed it. It looked like a slight burn.
"Did that stuff do it?" asked Jack.
"Yes; and that's almost as definite a proof as an analysis, of its intense radio activity. You noticed that the sample that Zeb had was enclosed in a leaden tube. That was the reason. Such powerful stuff would inflict bad burns if not handled properly."
"So that was why you made us include asbestos gloves and foot coverings and black goggles in the outfit?" cried Tom, who had been much puzzled over the reason for that part of the equipment.
"That was why," said the professor, "and that also is the reason we brought along those lead containers. Z. 2. X. or its ally, radium, or in fact vanadium or any of the allied radio-active metals, would destroy any other sort of container."
"Let's go down now and start digging," suggested impulsive Dick.
"Don't venture out there till you are fully equipped for the job," said the professor. "Serious results might ensue. In the meantime, I am going to analyze this sample in order to be doubly sure."
Jack gave a deep sigh of relief. After all, it was not a dream. They had found the valuable earth. It was now only a question of transportation. His father's fortunes were saved. The radio-'phone would be rushed to perfection and placed on the market within a short time of their return home.
While Jack lay back and indulged in daydreams, the others watched the professor as he tested the black sand over a portable assaying furnace and made all sorts of experiments to determine its value and the proportion of the different precious metals contained in it.
There was a slight rustling in the bushes behind him. Jack, whose nerves had been rather on edge since the occurrences of the preceding night and that morning, faced round quickly.
The next instant he uttered a loud shout.
Peering out of the bushes was a hideous, hairy face, more like an ape's than a human being's. From it glowed two wild, piercing eyes, like those of a beast of prey.
As Jack shouted and the others started toward him, the face vanished like a flash.
THE INTERLOPERS.
"Well, we'll git ter ther bottom uv this afore we leave ther island," declared Zeb vehemently, "but right now, pussonally, I'm more interested in gitting those lead carboys filled up with Z. 2. X. and gitting away from here."
"So are we," said Jack, thinking of his father.
They all donned their asbestos gloves and foot coverings under the professor's directions and put on the huge black goggles that had been brought along at the scientist's directions.
"I guess we'd scare that wild man into conniption fits if he could see us now," chuckled Tom, surveying his mates as they started out for the black barren.
"Yes, we look like a lot of men from Mars," agreed Dick.
Armed with shovels they attacked the dark, soft earth at a place the professor indicated. For an hour or more they worked and filled three of the lead carboys. Then Jack spoke.
"It's queer," he said, "but I begin to feel terribly tired, and I haven't worked long, either."
"So do I," said Tom. "I don't feel as if I could lift another shovelful."
"I'm all in," added Dick, throwing down his spade.
"Same here. Jes' 'bout tuckered out," chimed in Zeb.
"It's the effect of the stuff we are working in," said the professor. "Anyhow, we've done enough for to-day. We'll load the lead carboys on the Wondership and then knock off. I don't want you boys to get sick."
They took the loaded carboys to the grounded craft and the professor sealed and soldered a cover on each of them. Then they went back to the camp. Curiously, as soon as they reached it, the lassitude they had felt while working on the black barren left them. Jack proposed a hunting trip to Tom. Dick said he wanted to write up his notes from which, on their return, he was going to construct a big "story" for his paper.
The two chums struck out across the island. They met with fairly good luck. Jack brought down some rabbits and a partridge. Tom got three partridges and some squirrels. Game appeared to be plentiful on the island and Jack had a theory that at one time it must have been connected with the mainland.
At last their walking brought them out on the upper end of the island facing the smaller spot of land above. As they emerged from the trees, both boys got a big surprise.
Two boats had just been beached there!
"What in the world!" stammered out Jack.
"Who can——" began Tom, when the question was answered. The boys saw three figures coming down to the beach. They, seemingly, had been looking for a camp site.
"It's that fellow, Bill Masterson," explained Jack.
"So it is, and those other two are his cronies. The sneaks, they've followed us here!" cried Tom indignantly.
"Let's watch from behind these bushes and see what they do," said Jack.
They watched from a place of concealment while the three youths on the island above unloaded the second boat which they had towed down the river, carrying their camping equipment and provisions in it. They set up their tents quite boldly in full view of the other island and then proceeded to build a fire.
"How on earth did they get down the river without having a spill?" cried Jack.
"How did they know where Rattlesnake Island was?" wondered Tom, neither of the boys, of course, knowing of the opened letters.
"They seem prepared to make a long stay," commented Tom, after a minute, "but it's a wonder they weren't wrecked."
"I don't know," said Jack. "Zeb says the river is much higher now than he has ever seen it. That means that the rapids are not so dangerous as at low water. But they were taking quite a chance, at that."
The boys watched for a while longer and then returned to camp with their game and their news.
"If they try to land on this island, we'll soon chase 'em off," declared Dick vehemently.
"Then they'd have a case at law agin us," said Zeb.
"How do you mean?" asked Jack.
"Wa'al, we ain't filed no claim yet and in the eyes of the law them deposits down there in the black barren is as much theirs as ours."
That evening Zeb occupied himself with making several signs of intention to file claim which he intended to post all round the black barren, thus marking it off as if it had been a mine. Before they went to bed, Jack and Tom made another excursion to the upper end of the island where they watched the campfires of the interlopers for some time.
Suddenly, while they watched, they saw one of the boats with three figures in it shoved off. The craft began to drop down the river. Masterson, who was at the oars, steered straight for Rattlesnake Island.
"They're going to land here," declared Jack.
"What do you think of that for nerve," gasped Tom.
"The worst of it is, we can't stop them."
"No, that's so. Let's hide behind this rock and see what they do."
The boys slipped behind a big boulder and a moment later the boat was beached.
"Well, here we are," came in Eph's voice, "and if the stuff is worth all you say it is, we ought to get enough out in a couple of nights to make us rich."
"Gee! I can hardly wait till it's time to start digging," said Sam Higgins. "Here we are, on Tom Tiddler's ground, picking up gold and silver."
"Wait till we get it before you start hollering," said Masterson gruffly.
"What time will we start over?" asked Sam.
"About midnight. It will be plenty of time."
"But how are we going to locate it?" objected Eph.
"We can see where they've been digging, can't we?" said Bill Masterson, "or if they haven't started yet, we can hang around and watch till they do."
The three worthies sat under a rock not far from where the boys were and talked. It appeared that Bill Masterson had read up on mining and claim law and knew that the boys could not order them off the island. They had a right to take all of the mineral-bearing earth that they could.
Suddenly, however, their talk stopped.
"What are you doing, Eph?" demanded Sam indignantly.
"Nothing. What do you mean?" asked Eph in an astonished voice.
"You threw a rock at me."
"I didn't."
"You did. Ouch! There's another."
"One hit me, too," cried Eph, springing up, and at the same moment a yell came from Masterson.
Jack and Tom, as much surprised as the three marauders, heard the rocks pelting around them. Suddenly they looked up. Standing on a high rock above the place where Masterson and his cronies were talking, was a strange-looking figure in tattered clothes outlined in the moonlight.
He was busily hurling rocks down at the intruders. Suddenly a demoniacal laugh split the air and the creature vanished, running swiftly, crouched, with long arms hanging.
"It's the wild man!" gasped Tom, while the three worthies on the beach uttered a startled cry.
"It's ghosts, that's what it is," declared Sam Higgins shuddering.
"Nonsense. It's those kids. That's who it is," said Bill, but his voice was rather shaky.
"I never heard anything human laugh like that," declared Eph. "Ugh! it makes my blood run cold."
"Maybe we'd better go back," said Sam. "If we've got a right here I'd just as soon land in the daylight."
"You're a fine pair of babies," growled Bill. "I'm sorry I brought you along. Ghosts indeed—Wow! what was that?"
Another long ringing peal of laughter sounded through the night. It reverberated against the steep walls of the canyon and was flung mockingly from crag to crag. The boys felt their blood chill as they heard it. There was something diabolical in the merriment of the wild man who, they knew, was making the hideous sounds.
"I'm going back to the other island," declared Sam.
"If you move I'll knock your head off," said Masterson. "It's just a trick of those kids to scare us, that's all it is."
TRIUMPH.
It was midnight. The moon rode high in a cloudless sky, and the camp of the Boy Inventors, to all appearances, was wrapped in slumber. Through the woods came three creeping, cautious figures. Each carried a spade and a sack. They paused by the camp and looked about them.
Then, by the bright moonlight, they saw the bare plateau below. The black barren where the adventurers had been working that afternoon. Masterson was the first to see traces of digging. He seized Eph's arm and pointed.
"That's the place," he said in a hoarse whisper. "See, they've been at work there already."
"Tom Tiddler's ground," whispered Eph.
"I guess we'll get some of it, too," chuckled Sam, who had gotten over his fright in a sudden greed at the thought of riches.
Silently, for they had sacks tied round their feet, the three interlopers crept down the rocky slope toward the black barren. The dark ground, thickly sown with mineral wealth, glittered in the moonlight as if a frost had fallen on it and made it gleam iridescently with millions of sparkling points of light.
As the trio stole down the slope, dark figures from the Boy Inventors' camp followed them. Led by Zeb, they found hiding places and watched operations as Masterson and his cronies began to dig. They wielded their shovels frantically.
"And we can't stop them," groaned Dick.
"Wait a minute," said the professor.
They continued to watch, and before many minutes had passed they saw Sam Higgins lay down his shovel with a grunt.
"Go on and dig," ordered Masterson.
"Yes, hurry up, we haven't got all night," urged Eph.
Sam made a few more feeble movements and then quit.
'"I can't do any more," he said languidly.
"Ouch! my hands are burning," cried Eph suddenly, "and I feel as if all my bones had turned to water. What's the matter with the place?"
After a few minutes more both Eph and Sam gave up, but Masterson stuck doggedly to his task, although his hands were burning terribly, and the radio-active stuff was eating through the sacking on his feet. At last he, too, had to give in. They were too weak to carry the sacks they had partially filled across the island, owing to the effects of the black barren, and staggeringly they hid them to call for them at a later time.
"I thought so," said the professor, as the hidden watchers saw Masterson and the other two wearily clamber up the slope. "They'll have bad sores to-morrow and may be crippled for some time."
"But they'll recover?" said Jack, whose conscience began to smite him.
"Oh, yes, but they will have quite a lesson first," rejoined the professor.
"Let's see what they do next," suggested Jack, and he and Tom carefully made their way to where the trio had left the boat. Masterson ordered Sam to get on board; but just as the timorous youth was about to obey another hideous laugh from near at hand startled him so that he almost jumped out of his skin.
He leaped forward, but in his alarm missed the boat and gave it a shove that sent it into the stream. Sam fell flat on his face, while Masterson, with an exclamation of dismay, leaped for the boat. But the swift current had it in its grasp and bore it rapidly away. Masterson sprang on Sam and began beating him violently as the cause of all the trouble. It was serious enough for them. The loss of the boat had marooned them on the island.
The boat drifted past a rocky point further down the island shore. Had they been there, they would have been able to seize it. They watched it with alarmed eyes as it sailed down the current. All at once a dark figure dashed from the trees and made a spring from a high rock, hoping, seemingly, to land in the boat. Instead, there was the sound of a heavy fall and then a piteous groan.
Whoever it was had jumped for the boat, had missed it and fallen on the rocks. Not caring whether Masterson and his cronies saw them or not, the boys raced along the beach. From the groans of the injured person they knew that he was badly, possibly mortally, hurt.
In a few minutes they reached his side.
"It's the wild man!" cried Jack, as they gazed at a hairy, wild-looking man who lay stretched out, breathing heavily, on the rocks where he had fallen. His only clothing was a pair of tattered canvas trousers and a ragged shirt.
"Poor old Foxy. He's done for at last, is Foxy, for his sins," groaned the man in an insane voice. "He suffered terrible for his crimes, has Foxy, but it's all over now."
"Foxy!" exclaimed Jack. "That's the man that came down the river with Blue Nose Sanchez. The man who stayed in the boat."
"He must have landed here and then gone crazy from privation," said Jack. "I can't find that any bones are broken," he said after a brief examination. "Suppose we carry him back to camp?"
"I wonder where that Masterson outfit has got to?" said Tom, as they picked up the wasted form of Foxy, who was raving and moaning by turns.
"I don't know. They are in a fine predicament now. They've got no food and no boat They're marooned on this island."
"I suppose we'll have to help them out," said Tom.
"I guess so, though they don't deserve it."
"I lost that boat," moaned Foxy. "I could have got away in it. Poor old Foxy. It's tough on Foxy," and he began to weep.
The professor found that the man had not suffered any broken bones but the fall had bruised and sprained him and he was helpless. From scattered bits of his ravings they learned what he had endured on the island and how, when the black sand began to burn him, he had had to give up working on it. Then his boat had drifted away and since then he had lived the life of a wild man, setting snares for rabbits and partridges, and eating them raw, tearing them with his clawlike fingers.
Early the next day the expected happened. Chastened, and with burned and swollen hands and feet, Masterson and his cronies came into the boys' camp at breakfast time. They looked crestfallen and sheepish, but the boys did not want to make them feel any worse than they did, so they spared them questions at first.
But when Masterson begged them to get them out of their predicament and take them back to Yuma, Jack felt that it was time to put them through a cross examination.
"You followed us here to try to cut out some ground from under our feet, Masterson," he said, "and you know you told me in Nestorville you wanted to get even with me."
"Don't rub it in, Chadwick," said the humbled Masterson. "I'll do anything you say if you'll only get us out of this terrible place. I can hardly walk, and my hands feel as if they'd been burned in a fire."
"How did you know our destination?" asked Tom. Masterson made a full confession and at the end begged forgiveness.
"This ought to be a good lesson to you to mind your own affairs," said Jack as he concluded.
"I know a man who made a big fortune just minding his business," said Dick. "For my part," he went on, "I'll forgive you, but I want you to sign a paper promising not to publish anything about this expedition."
"I will—oh, I will," said Masterson. And then he wrote as Dick dictated. The boys witnessed and signed the paper.
"And now you'd better eat breakfast," said Jack.