“Hey, fellows, get up! I’ve got hot coffee ready for you, and we’ll start right out!”
“For cats’ sake, who’s that?” demanded the sleepy voice of Ned.
“Oh, you needn’t ask,” murmured Jerry. “It’s Bob, of course, though how he managed to get up so early is one of the mysteries.”
“Come on!” cried Bob, as he banged on the doors of the sleeping rooms of his chums. “We’re going to get that gold to-day.”
“Oh, so that’s the game,” said Jerry. “Bob is hot on the treasure hunt! Well, I suppose we had better get started.”
“That’s right,” agreed Ned, as he leaped out from amid the bedclothes.
It was the morning after their first night spent in the gold valley, and the sun had arisen without anything of moment having occurred during the darkness. They had not felt the necessity of maintaining a watch, and, as it proved, there was no need of one. In the desolate valley they werenot disturbed. There was scarcely any wind to sway the anchored airship.
Bob was as good as his promise. He not only had hot coffee ready, but bacon and eggs, toasted crackers—for bread was difficult to bake and hard to keep fresh—and other things that invited hungry appetites.
“Well, now what’s the programme?” asked Ned, when the meal was over.
“I’m going to look for the luminous snakes!” exclaimed Professor Snodgrass, as he hurriedly jumped up to capture a new kind of fly that had buzzed in through the open window. “The rest of you can look for the gold if you like.”
“Well, I guess there’s no reason for any more disguise work,” spoke Jerry. “We’ve left the Blackfeet Indians behind, the grub-stakers don’t appear to have followed us, and we seem to have left Noddy Nixon and his crew in the lurch. So, if the professor wants to go off by himself for specimens, I guess he can, while we try to locate where the gold is hidden.”
That seemed to satisfy them all, and they turned to Harvey Brill, on whom would fall the burden of locating the hidden nuggets of gold.
“If we can get in the airship, and move along slowly, not too high up, I think I can pick out the landmark that will tell me where I made thecache,” said the miner. “It’s near a big rockthat looks like a church, as much as anything—it has a regular steeple.”
“Well, I don’t see why we can’t do that,” returned Jerry. “I can run the airship along as near to the ground as we like, by putting just a small charge of gas in the bag, so she won’t rise too high. It will be easier than walking the length of this valley, with all the rocks around.”
“But I can’t see the snakes, unless I’m right on the ground,” objected the professor.
“I was thinking of that,” went on the tall lad. “You can walk, if you like. We can leave you some food and water, and you can prospect as much as you please, just where you like. When you want us to come back and pick you up, just raise this flag as a signal, on a pole,” and Jerry produced a red cloth that could be picked out at some distance. “Then we’ll run the airship back and get you,” he concluded.
“And the snakes, too!” exclaimed the professor. “Don’t forget them. I’m bound to secure those specimens!”
“I hope you do,” murmured Ned; “and I hope we get the gold.”
“We’ll just have to!” exclaimed Bob. “If not the sixty nuggets, then some other, for the folks back home are sort of banking on us, and we can’t disappoint ’em after they’ve invested their money in the chance.”
“That’s right!” exclaimed Harvey Brill. “Oh, I’m going to make good, or I’ll go off grub-staking again and discover another pocket of gold. I won’t see your folks done out of their money!” He seemed to feel his responsibility.
Professor Snodgrass began getting his apparatus ready for catching alive the luminous snakes, and it was arranged to take him a little way up the valley in the motorship, leave him, and then proceed on the gold hunt.
The gas machine was set going, and with only enough of the powerful vapor in the big bag to lift the craft above the highest of the big rocks that were strewn over the valley, they set off. Professor Snodgrass alighted about two miles from their first camping place, and at once began an eager search for new specimens. Then the others went slowly on.
“A rock that looks like a church; eh?” mused Ned, who had replaced Jerry at the steering wheels. “Well, there are all sorts and shapes of rocks here, you can take your choice.”
“I picked out that one,” explained the miner, “as I thought it was so big that nothing would ever move it. I hid the gold in a sort of stone pocket at the foot of it.”
Eagerly they peered about for a sight of the great stone that would mark the hiding place of the nuggets. Mr. Brill had a general idea ofwhere he hadcachedhis fortune, and said they would not reach it much before passing the center of the valley.
“But we’d better take no chances,” he added; “for the landslide may have shifted things so that I’d pass over the spot before I knew it. So go slow, and we’ll look all along the way.”
Several times he thought he saw, in the distance, the big “church-rock” of which they were in search, and the airship would be sent to it, only to disappoint the searchers. For, when they got nearer the boulder, its form would change.
“That isn’t it,” Harvey Brill would say, and they would start off again.
This was kept up for some time, but shortly after dinner, when they were skimming along just above the surface, the old miner uttered a cry:
“There it is! I’m sure of it!” he exclaimed. “I’m not fooled this time! There’s the rock landmark!”
Indeed, about a mile off was a great pile of stones that bore a strong resemblance to a church. There was even a slender steeple.
“That looks like it,” admitted Jerry, who had again gone to the steering tower. “We’ll drop down there and have a look.”
A nearer view only served to confirm Mr. Brill in his belief, and, as they alighted from theairship, he fairly ran to the foot of the great rock, and began looking about.
“I’m pretty sure this is the place,” he said, but the boys noticed that his voice was not as confident as it had been. “We’ll just dig a bit around here,” he went on. “It may be that the rains have washed dirt over thecache.”
“I’ll do the digging,” volunteered Jim Nestor, who had a pick and shovel, and soon he was making the rocks and dirt scatter, while the others looked on eagerly. Mr. Brill seemed a bit puzzled, however, and from time to time gazed off across the valley, as if to make sure this, and none other, was the rock he sought.
Suddenly Bob, who was thinking of returning to the airship for a sandwich, uttered a cry, and pointed to a cliff that towered above their heads—one of the upper boundaries of the valley.
“Look!” he exclaimed. “We’re being spied upon!”
They all glanced to where he pointed, and there, boldly outlined against the sky, they saw a number of figures looking down on them—watching them.
“Blackfeet!” cried Ned.
“They’re not Indians!” asserted Jim Nestor.
“Then it’s Noddy Nixon and his crowd!” declared Jerry. “They have managed to trail us!”