Billee Dobb, having listened to the stories of Bud and his cousins, and the tale told by Sam and his pals, shook his head dubiously.
"I can't figger it all out," he said. "But you sure done a noble job, Tosh, and we thank you for it. Can you tell us anything about those rascals with their tanks of gas?"
"I don't know nothin' about gas tanks," said the old man. "But more than once I've warned you men about——"
What the warning was he did not get a chance to explain, for at that moment Professor Dodson, the mine expert, with his assistant, Professor Snath, emerged from the interior of the cave, into whose black depths they had disappeared some time ago, while Bud and the others were talking.
"By golly!" exclaimed Billee, suddenly changing the subject. "They got their report ready pretty quick. I reckon the gold's so thick in there they don't need to make much of a test. Whoopee! I'll soon have my self-playin' piano!" He was as eager and excited as a boy. Indeed Bud and his cousins were not a little excited as they looked at the two scientists who came out carrying specimens of ore which they had knocked off the walls of the cave with their peculiar hammers.
"Didn't take you long," commented Bud.
"No, this was an easy problem," answered Professor Dodson. "We don't even need an assay to determine our findings."
"By golly! What do you know about that?" cried Billee. "About how many dollars will she run to the ton?" he asked. "I only want to knowabout," he stipulated. "I won't pin you down by five or ten dollars, 'cause I think that wouldn't be fair. But roughly about how much do you think our mine will assay to the ton?"
"How much what?" asked Professor Dodson with a peculiar smile. "How much what to the ton?"
"How much gold, of course!" exclaimed Billee. "What else? Gold's what we want; ain't it?" and he chuckled as he turned to his friends.
"Sure—gold!" was the murmur.
"Then I'm sorry to have to tell you that there is not one ounce of gold in any number of tons of ore and rock in that cave!" was the unexpected and startling answer. "There isn't any gold at all."
"No gold!" cried Bud.
"No gold!" echoed his cousins.
"No—no—gold!" faltered Billee Dobb, his jaw falling. He saw his self-playing piano fading back into the dim vista of his dreams.
"No gold," repeated Professor Dodson. "What we have here," and he indicated the ore specimens held by himself and Professor Snath, "is a selected lot of samples of iron sulphid. It is a yellow ore that looks very much like gold, but which has none of the properties of real gold. In fact it is so often mistaken for the valuable metal that it has come to be called 'Fools' Gold.' I am sorry, but such is the case. I shall so report to Mr. Merkel, who engaged me to come out here after hearing his son's account."
"Fools' gold!" murmured Bud. "Well, it fooled us all right."
"Yes, and it fooled those other fellows," said Nort. "The men with the gas cylinders," he added.
As the two professors looked a little puzzled, Dick explained:
"There were some men hiding in this cave who must have thought, the same as we did, that it contained gold. They drove out Mr. Tosh, who used the cavern to brew his medicine. Then they drove us out. They used tanks of some poison gas, or at least gas that made a man unconscious. We had to put on gas masks, the kind used in the war, to fight 'em. But we drove 'em out."
"And a lot of good it did us," said Bud gloomingly, "if there isn't any gold in there."
"No, the evidence is too plain to be mistaken," said Professor Snath. "It does not even require a laboratory test to prove that the cave is rich in iron sulphid, but not gold."
"Maybe it will turn out to be an iron mine instead of a gold mine!" put in Billee, with new hope showing on his face. "Iron's valuable. Not worth as much as gold, of course, but a good iron mine—say, boys, maybe I'll get that self-playin' piano yet."
But again his hopes were dashed.
"It wouldn't pay to work this section even for iron," said ProfessorDodson, and his assistant nodded his agreement.
"Well, then," remarked Nort, "we'll have to keep on raising cattle."
"But we can't do that if these fellows are going to let loose a flood of poison gas and kill them off every now and then!" bitterly cried Bud. "We're beat either way you look at it. Just as you said, Billee, this is Death Valley."
"Tell me more about this!" suddenly suggested the older scientist."What is all this about poison gas in tanks killing cattle?"
"I can tell you!" came from Old Tosh. "I know all about it but nobody would ever listen to me. They said I was crazy. But I know! Look here!"
He pointed to a crack, or fissure in the rocky floor of the glen, not far from the cave entrance. It was just such a crack as Bud and his cousins had noticed one day near the place where they had found some dead cattle.
"Listen to that! It's rising!" cried Old Tosh, bending over the crack.
The two professors, the boy ranchers and some of the punchers leaned over and listened. From somewhere down in the depths of the earth came the rustle and swish of running water.
"An underground stream," said Professor Dodson. "They are not uncommon in this region. But——"
Suddenly he started back and withdrew his face quickly from above the crack in the earth.
"Hurry away from here!" he cried. "The gas is rising. I begin to understand now. It is the secret you have been trying to solve. Hurry away! It may not be deadly, but it will overcome all of us in a short time."
He ran down the defile, away from the long fissure, followed by the others, Billee and his men driving the ponies before them. Professor Dodson had made a strange discovery, after Old Tosh had put him on the track of it.
Hurrying along, some of the men in their saddles, others stumbling on foot, not having taken the time to mount, the whole party rushed out of the defile. It was not until they had reached open country, some distance removed from the entrance to Smugglers' Glen, that the older scientist thought it safe to call a halt. And he did not do this until he had looked around, with his assistant, to make sure there were no earth fissures near, and had also ascertained the direction of the wind. He tested the air by breathing deeply of it and said:
"We're safe for a time. But there's no telling how long. This is a most remarkable natural phenomenon—one of the most remarkable I have ever happened upon."
"Very remarkable," agreed Professor Snath.
"But what's it all about?" asked Bud. "We've seen those earth cracks before."
"And near the place where there were dead cattle," added Nort.
"We heard running water down below, too," was Dick's contribution to the general information.
"Those cracks go down to the bed of an underground stream," explained Professor Dodson. "The subterranean river, brook or whatever it is, must flow a long distance under this ranch," and he looked over the expanse of valley, hill and plain. "Now an ordinary underground stream is not dangerous. In fact where it comes to the surface, as many do, it provides valuable water. But the stream below here is impregnated with a deadly gas." He gave it a long Latin name. "At least if it is not always deadly," he went on, "and it may not be so at all times, owing to dilution, it is risky to breathe it. I think that is the explanation of the deaths of your cattle," he said to Bud. "And you men who were rendered unconscious," he indicated Sam and his guards, "you must have breathed a modified form of the gas."
"But those fellows had gas in tanks!" cried Nort.
"No question about that!" added Billee. "Did they bottle up this stuff you gave such a long name to, Professor, and shoot it out at us?"
"No," was the answer. "I am inclined to think these unknown men used a very different kind of gas against you—probably a comparatively harmless vapor discovered during the war activities. I think there are two puzzles here and that they are both in the way, now, of being solved."
"It looks so," murmured Bud. "But how is the poison gas generated and how does it come up out of cracks in the earth to kill cattle and knock out our men?"
"The explanation is probably very simple," said the scientist. "There must be, somewhere near the head of the defile we just left, a deposit of the mineral or ore from which this gas I speak of is generated. It is somewhat like carbon monoxide, but more powerful even in the open air."
"Water, flowing over a bed of this mineral, liberates the gas in the form of an almost invisible vapor. It is swept forward in a cloud by the wind, some of it is carried along above the course of the underground stream, and as soon as it reaches an opening in the earth, like a fissure crack in the rock or ground, the gas rises and whoever breathes it dies or is rendered unconscious for a time, according to the strength of the vapor. At one time the underground stream may be strongly impregnated with the dissolved chemicals that generate the gas. At another time the emanations may be comparatively weak. That, I think, is the explanation of happenings here in Death Valley, as you call it."
"Then the men who thought they had a gold mine in the cave had nothing to do with killing the cattle?" asked Nort.
"I can't say for sure, but I think not," the professor replied. "I am inclined to believe that they got these tanks of gas to use in driving away any who might try to get at their secret—a useless secret as it proves now. But the accidental deaths, both of cattle and men, from the underground gas must have been going on here a long time," the scientist suggested.
"They have!" declared Old Billee. "Several years back. That's why I quit here. But we didn't know what the cause was. Some said poisoned water, others poison loco-weed. Some said it was the souls of Indians who were driven out of this valley years ago."
"And all the while it was just a natural gas liberated by an underground stream running over a bed of chemicals," stated Bud.
"That's what I think," said Professor Dodson. "It remains to be proved conclusively, but that is what I think will be found."
"Then this means the end of Death Valley," went on Bud, gloomily. "We can't afford to stay here and raise cattle to be killed off by gas."
"No," agreed Professor Dodson. "But do not form a hasty decision.Science can do much these days. It may be possible to neutralize thisgas and so make your ranch safe. In that case it will be the end ofDeath Valley but in a better way. It will be Life Valley then."
"Do you think it can be done?" eagerly Bud asked.
"I don't know. But it's worth trying. You say you have gas masks?They will be needed I think."
"Plenty of 'em!" cried Bud. "Come on back to the ranch where we still have them. We may win yet!" he said to his cousins. "If the gold mine peters out, as it has done, we'll get rich raising cattle in one of the best valleys of the west—providing the poison gas can be done away with."
"There's always anifin the road," murmured Nort.
But when, a little later, the scientists, the boy ranchers and some of the men, wearing gas masks, penetrated to the far end of the defile, they found conditions which were distinctly encouraging. Professor Dodson located the mass of mineral which, when wet, gave off the vapor that caused death or disablement according to its strength.
"All that needs to be done," he said, indicating the stream which ran for some distance in the open before plunging underground, "is to build a small dam, change the course of this little river and send it downoutsidethe defile, instead ofthroughit. Keep this stream entirely in the open and you will do away with the poison gas. It is really a not very difficult problem in engineering and irrigation. It will not cost much to do this."
"Then it's going to be done, and it means the end of Death Valley forever!" cried Bud. "I mean a happy ending," he added. "For we'll do away with all danger."
"Thanks to you gentlemen and to Old Tosh," said Nort. "For he helped, didn't he?"
"Indeed he did," agreed Professor Snath.
"And when the course of the stream is changed," went on his chief, "there is no reason why the old herb doctor cannot resume work in his cave if he wants to. It will be safe then."
"Guess he'll be glad to hear that!" chuckled Nort. "He's been like a lost dog these last few weeks. Then those fellows, with their gas tanks, didn't have anything to do with killing our cattle?" he suggested.
"Not a thing," declared Professor Dodson. "It was a war against nature you were fighting."
"We've only just begun to fight her!" cried Bud.
Mr. Merkel was not much disappointed when he learned that the cave mine had petered out.
"I never took much stock in it," he told his son over the telephone. "But I'm glad you've solved the mystery of Death Valley. I'll send some engineers over, we'll change the course of that stream and go in for cattle raising. That's our business, anyhow, not mining."
In a few weeks the dam was constructed, the stream, where it ran in the open, was shifted several hundred feet and there was no longer any danger of it dissolving the chemicals and carrying the deadly gas underground, to send it up out of fissures to the detriment of man and beast. While the work was going on, all cattle were removed from the vicinity of the defile, which was found to be the only danger spot on Dot and Dash.
The boys recalled the time when, in riding over the range, their horses had taken such a sudden fright. They could not determine whether at that time some poison gas might have seeped out, alarming the sensitive beasts, or whether it was something like a snake which might have startled the ponies. It was one of the things that remained unsolved, but it was a minor phase of the main problem which had been brought to a successful conclusion.
And so, in this comparatively simple manner, was the mystery solved and an end put to Death Valley, though it retained that name for many years.
Some time after all danger was removed, when cattle roamed freely over the range, as near the defile as they cared to go, and when Old Tosh was again allowed to brew his Elixer in the cave, a man was arrested in Los Pompan for horse stealing. He was convicted and it developed he was one of the men who had used the poison gas tanks against the boy ranchers. He was one of a gang.
They had nothing to do with and knew nothing of the emanations of natural gas in Death Valley. They had heard the sinister reputation of the place, but that did not keep them out, and they discovered the cave and at once jumped to the conclusion that it contained gold. They frightened away Old Tosh and when Bud stumbled on their operations they adopted the sinister form of defense they used later. One of the men in the gang had served in the chemical warfare division of the A.E.F. overseas. He was an expert chemist and developed a gas that would knock a man out but not kill him. Thus Bud was made a prisoner, escaping when the men left him for a time.
The gang had taken considerable of the yellow ore out of the cave, and, doubtless after the battle in which they were worsted, they discovered it to be valueless. So they had no reason to return to the territory. The gang dispersed. None of them, it appeared, had ever suffered from the effects of the natural gas.
Soon after the course of the stream was changed, Dot and Dash ranch was a busy place. Several new herds were bought and pastured and more men were hired. There was no trouble, now, in getting men from near by, for the story of the passing of the menacing gas was told all over.
Old Tosh was kept busy making his Elixer, for though the men knew it was comparatively useless as a medicine, some of them thought it did them good, and they rather liked the root beer taste it had.
"Why don't you put your full name on your labels?" asked Nort of the queer old codger one day, when the boys were visiting him in his, or, rather, their cave, which he had fitted up to live in while he did his brewing. "You just call it 'Tosh Elixer.'"
"That's enough for a name," he chuckled. "But my first name, if you want to know it is Simon. I don't fancy it so I seldom use it."
"Simon Tosh!" murmured Bud. "S.T. Why," he cried, "those were the initials signed to that warning we received while we were on our way here. Did you come to our camp and leave that note?"
"Yes, I did," was the answer. "I heard a new crowd was coming to Death Valley and I thought I'd save their lives if I could warn them not to come. I knew there was something with a queer smell, coming out of the earth, that killed men, horses and cattle. But I couldn't find out what it was. But I knew enough to get out of my cave and the glen when I caught the first whiff of the queer perfume. It didn't get me."
"No, but it did for enough poor fellows, and for too many of our stock before we found out what it was," said Nort.
"I never could understand, though," said Mr. Tosh, after he had identified the two warning notes which Bud produced from his wallet, "I never could understand why the gas came at some times and not at others. You never knew when to look for it."
"Professor Dodson explained that," stated Bud. "It was due to the height of the underground stream, and also the stream in the open. At low water there wasn't enough fluid to cover the bed of chemicals, and so no gas was generated. When the water rose, the gas was given off."
"Science is wonderful," murmured the old man.
The boys left him brewing his kettle of herbs. He insisted on giving them a bottle of the Elixer though he knew they would not swallow any of it.
"Give it to Fah Moo," suggested Mr. Tosh. "But tell him not to drink it all at once."
"We will," promised Dick with a chuckle.
The boys rode home over the rolling plains, dotted with cattle. No longer need they look for lifeless forms. Death Valley, as such, was no longer in existence.
"And we'll make almost as much money out of stock raising as if we had a gold mine," said Nort.
"Surest thing you know!" agreed Bad.
They put their horses in the corral and went in to supper.
"Smells good—whatever Fah Moo is cooking!" commented Dick. "What is it, Fah?" he asked as the Chinese cook came shuffling in.
"Melican man tulky," was the smiling answer.
"American turkey, what does he mean?" asked Nort.
"Roast pork and apple sauce," chuckled Bud, and he was right.
"Here, Fah," said Dick, handing the cook the bottle of Elixer. "Tosh sent this to you."
The celestial gave one look at the flask, raised his hands to cover his mouth and ran from the room, squeaking in his falsetto voice:
"No can do! No can do!"
"He'll never open another bottle here as long as he lives!" chuckledBud.
And then, as the sun began to sink behind the western hills and from the various stations on the ranch the cowboys filed in to supper, the boys gathered at the table for the bountiful meal and were very happy. They had solved the poison mystery and made Death Valley a place of life.
By WILLARD F. BAKER
12mo. Cloth. Illustrated. Jacket in full colors
Stories of the great west, with cattle ranches as a setting, related in such a style as to captivate the hearts of all boys.
or Solving the Mystery at Diamond X. Two eastern boys visit their cousin. They become involved in an exciting mystery.
or the Water Fight at Diamond X. Returning for a visit, the two eastern lads learn, with delight, that they are to become boy ranchers.
or The Diamond X After Cattle Rustlers. Our boy heroes take the trail after Del Pinzo and his outlaws.
or Trailing the Yaquis. Rosemary and Floyd are captured by the Yaqui Indians but the boy ranchers trailed them into the mountains and effected the rescue.
or Fighting the Sheep Herders. Dangerous struggle against desperadoes for land rights brings out heroic adventures.
or Diamond X and the Lost Mine. One night a strange old miner almost dead from hunger and hardship arrived at the bunk house. The boys cared for him and he told them of the lost desert mine.
or Diamond X and the Chinese Smugglers. The boy ranchers help capture Delton's gang who were engaged in smuggling Chinese across the border.
or Diamond X and the Poison Mystery. The Boy Ranchers track Mysterious Death into his cave.
CUPPLES & LEON COMPANY, Publishers, New York
By ROY ROCKWOOD
12mo. Cloth. Illustrated. With colored jacket.
Bomba lived far back in the jungles of the Amazon, with a half-demented naturalist who told the lad nothing of his past. The jungle boy was a lover of birds, and hunted animals with a bow and arrow and his trusty machete. He had a primitive education in some things, and his daring adventures will be followed with breathless interest by thousands.
1. BOMBA THE JUNGLE BOYor The Old Naturalist's Secret
2. BOMBA THE JUNGLE BOY AT THE MOVING MOUNTAINor The Mystery of the Caves of Fire
3. BOMBA THE JUNGLE BOY AT THE GIANT CATARACTor Chief Nasconora and His Captives
4. BOMBA THE JUNGLE BOY ON JAGUAR ISLANDor Adrift on the River of Mystery
5. BOMBA THE JUNGLE BOY IN THE ABANDONED CITYor A Treasure Ten Thousand Years Old
6. BOMBA THE JUNGLE BOY ON TERROR TRAILor The Mysterious Men from the Sky
7. BOMBA THE JUNGLE BOY IN THE SWAMP OF DEATHor The Sacred Alligators of Abarago
8. BOMBA THE JUNGLE BOY AMONG THE SLAVESor Daring Adventures in the Valley of Skulls
CUPPLES & LEON COMPANY, Publishers, New York