CHAPTER XXIII
WATCHED
“Hey, fellows, get up! I’ve got hot coffee ready for you, and we’llstart 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 howhe managed to get up so early is one of the mysteries.”
“Come on!” cried Bob, as he banged on the doors of the sleeping roomsof 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 occurredduring the darkness. They had not felt the necessity of maintaining awatch, and, as it proved, there was no need of one. In the desolatevalley they were not disturbed. There was scarcely any wind to swaythe anchored airship.
Bob was as good as his promise. He not only had hot coffee ready, butbacon and eggs, toasted crackers--for bread was difficult to bake andhard 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 ProfessorSnodgrass, as he hurriedly jumped up to capture a new kind of fly thathad buzzed in through the open window. “The rest of you can look forthe gold if you like.”
“Well, I guess there’s no reason for any more disguise work,” spokeJerry. “We’ve left the Blackfeet Indians behind, the grub-stakers don’tappear to have followed us, and we seem to have left Noddy Nixon andhis crew in the lurch. So, if the professor wants to go off by himselffor specimens, I guess he can, while we try to locate where the gold ishidden.”
That seemed to satisfy them all, and they turned to Harvey Brill, onwhom 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 the_cache_,” said the miner. “It’s near a big rock that looks like achurch, as much as anything--it has a regular steeple.”
“Well, I don’t see why we can’t do that,” returned Jerry. “I can runthe airship along as near to the ground as we like, by putting just asmall charge of gas in the bag, so she won’t rise too high. It willbe easier than walking the length of this valley, with all the rocksaround.”
“But I can’t see the snakes, unless I’m right on the ground,” objectedthe professor.
“I was thinking of that,” went on the tall lad. “You can walk, if youlike. We can leave you some food and water, and you can prospect asmuch as you please, just where you like. When you want us to come backand pick you up, just raise this flag as a signal, on a pole,” andJerry 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’mbound 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, thensome other, for the folks back home are sort of banking on us, and wecan’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 hisresponsibility.
Professor Snodgrass began getting his apparatus ready for catchingalive the luminous snakes, and it was arranged to take him a little wayup the valley in the motorship, leave him, and then proceed on the goldhunt.
The gas machine was set going, and with only enough of the powerfulvapor in the big bag to lift the craft above the highest of the bigrocks that were strewn over the valley, they set off. ProfessorSnodgrass alighted about two miles from their first camping place, andat once began an eager search for new specimens. Then the others wentslowly on.
“A rock that looks like a church; eh?” mused Ned, who had replacedJerry at the steering wheels. “Well, there are all sorts and shapes ofrocks here, you can take your choice.”
“I picked out that one,” explained the miner, “as I thought it was sobig that nothing would ever move it. I hid the gold in a sort of stonepocket at the foot of it.”
Eagerly they peered about for a sight of the great stone that wouldmark the hiding place of the nuggets. Mr. Brill had a general idea ofwhere he had _cached_ his fortune, and said they would not reach itmuch before passing the center of the valley.
“But we’d better take no chances,” he added; “for the landslide mayhave shifted things so that I’d pass over the spot before I knew it. Sogo 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, onlyto disappoint the searchers. For, when they got nearer the boulder, itsform 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 theywere 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 strongresemblance to a church. There was even a slender steeple.
“That looks like it,” admitted Jerry, who had again gone to thesteering tower. “We’ll drop down there and have a look.”
A nearer view only served to confirm Mr. Brill in his belief, and, asthey alighted from the airship, he fairly ran to the foot of the greatrock, and began looking about.
“I’m pretty sure this is the place,” he said, but the boys noticed thathis voice was not as confident as it had been. “We’ll just dig a bitaround here,” he went on. “It may be that the rains have washed dirtover the _cache_.”
“I’ll do the digging,” volunteered Jim Nestor, who had a pick andshovel, and soon he was making the rocks and dirt scatter, while theothers looked on eagerly. Mr. Brill seemed a bit puzzled, however, andfrom 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 asandwich, uttered a cry, and pointed to a cliff that towered abovetheir 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 outlinedagainst the sky, they saw a number of figures looking down onthem--watching them.
“Blackfeet!” cried Ned.
“They’re not Indians!” asserted Jim Nestor.
“Then it’s Noddy Nixon and his crowd!” declared Jerry. “They havemanaged to trail us!”