"Boy howdy! I can't hardly believe it!" shouted Yellin' Kid. "First time I was ever on a ranch that developed gold!"
"What's the best thing to do?" asked Nort, of no one in particular.
"Hadn't the boss better file a claim of discovery?" suggested a cowboy who said he had once lived in California.
"He don't need to file nothin'!" declared Billee. "This gold is found on Mr. Merkel's land. Everything on the land is hissen. He can work the gold mine same as he can his cattle ranges."
That seemed to be the consensus of opinion and it was decided that all remaining to be done was to inform Bud's father of the discovery, start to work the claim and take the profit.
"And clean out them rascals!" added Billee.
"Oh, sure!" agreed Bud. "It's queer, though," he went on as he flashed his light about the cave, "that if gold has been here since the beginning, as it must have, that the secret of it only just now got out. And if the gang that's been working this mine has been shooting out poison gas to keep people away from here, why didn't some rumor of this gold strike filter out before?"
"There's something wrong," declared Billee. "I don't believe the deaths that took place in this here valley, from the time I knowed about 'em, had anything to do with this gold cave. I'm sure they didn't. And, what's more, this claim has only been worked recent like. You can tell that by the fresh marks of the digging."
This was plain to all, and the more they thought of it the more of a puzzle it was. Clearly poison gas, if such it was, had only recently been used to guard the approach to the cave. What, then, was the explanation of the former mysterious deaths?
But the boys and their friends were so excited over the discovery of the yellow metal that they gave little heed to this phase of the matter. All the talk had to do with getting out the ore and finding how much it assayed to the ton.
"But we can't let the cattle business slide; can we?" asked Dick, as he and most of the others prepared to depart. A guard was to be left in the cave, and sufficient food and supplies would be sent them to enable them to remain on constant duty.
"Oh, no, we won't give up the cattle business," decided Bud. "We'll work that and the mine, too."