“And you say there are tons of gold under there?” the boy heard Toombs ask. “Is there any way of getting at it at once?”
Jimmie saw Sigma nod his head vigorously.
“Can you understand exactly what I say?” Toombs asked in a moment.
Sigma nodded again, and the Wall street man went on:
“What we want to do right now,” he said, “is to get the gold out without any publicity whatever. Do you understand that?”
The Indian looked puzzled at the long words used, but nodded. It was evident that he understood the general import of the other’s talk.
“The men I represent,” Toombs went on, “would throw a few dirty dollars into my lap for information which would bring them millions. Now my idea is to get the gold out and get away with it.”
“Say, Toombs,” Jimmie whispered to himself behind the rock, “you’re a dirty old schemer!”
“With the gold in our possession, we can disappear from the country, you and I. We need never trouble ourselves about money any more.”
The Indian nodded while a pleased smile came over his rugged face.
“How many know of this mine?” asked Toombs.
Sigma held up eight fingers and pointed into the pit.
“And where are they now?” demanded the Wall street man.
“All in the mine getting out gold!” was the reply.
“They can get it out pretty fast, can’t they?” asked Toombs.
The Indian nodded, and said in a guttural voice that many great heaps of it had already been taken out of the rock and stored in the inner chamber. Toombs’ eyes brightened wickedly at the information.
“And they’re all in there now?” he asked. “All the heaps?”
“We don’t want anyone watching us,” Toombs explained, “so we must make sure about their all being in the cave. You go through the dry channel and find out if they are all really there, then come to the entrance and signal to me and go back and explain what we have planned—that I am to market the gold, for them and receive half.”
“Now it strikes me,” Jimmie mused, “that if I were in Sigma’s place, I wouldn’t go into that old channel and leave Toombs on the outside, especially if every living person having knowledge of the deposit of gold was on the inside, too!”
The Indian disappeared over the edge of the Devil’s Punch Bowl and made his way to the bottom, pursuing practically the same tactics resorted to by the boys the day before. As soon as he disappeared in the old dry channel, Toombs, who had carefully watched the Indian’s every move, proceeded to follow into the depression.