Part 32 (2/2)

There was Duran's blackened face in the light of a lantern, which he was in the act of hanging on some form of hook in the cavern wall. The vault, I saw, was high, and at least fifty feet wide. It was down near the water that Duran was; and I saw him stoop and put his hand into the stream; and he fished out some sort of packet which he laid on the cavern floor. Time after time he reached down into the rus.h.i.+ng water, and took out a packet each dive, till he had a pile on the floor that would measure a peck.

At last Duran sat himself on the cavern's floor, and he busied himself with untying knots and separating the objects he dealt with in two piles. And next he rose to his feet and set to transporting one of his piles to some niche that was out of the field of my eye.

Duran's next procedure was to gather the other pile into a sack. And this he took in hand and forthwith began to move back toward my part of the cavern.

I wormed my way down in my pa.s.sage again, and when I had got a little way from the cascade, I waited and listened. But he must have gone back the way he had come. I ventured in again.

When I poked my head out of the pa.s.sage into the cavern, there was no sign of Duran. But the lantern still hung where he had fixed it, throwing its light about that s.p.a.ce.

I now ventured down to the scene of Duran's labors. There, completely spanning the stream, and reaching down to its bed, was a network of some sort of tough fibre, reinforced with slender bamboo. Near at hand, in a niche, lay, in a pile near a foot high, short sections of bamboo as thick as my arm. I took up one in my hand. Even prepared as I was for the discovery, its weight nevertheless startled me; it might have been solid bra.s.s.

”At last this smells of the gold mine!” I thought to myself. He would hardly miss one of these. And after hefting in my hand a half-dozen more, to satisfy myself that all were loaded, I retained that first bamboo cylinder and hurried to my exit.

As I pa.s.sed out on all fours through that little waterfall, I got a fresh drenching. I waded on down the stream, and presently I heard a voice. It was Ray's; and he was over in our little camp.

It came into my mind to even up for some of the tricks Ray had played me. So I trilled out a low whistle, and when I heard them coming, I ducked myself in the creek. I held my breath for as long a s.p.a.ce as I could manage, and then rose out of the water and made for the path, pretending not to see those petrified forms pedestaled on the creek bank. I went up the path and moved toward the camp, and when they hurried forward--”h.e.l.lo!” I said. ”Are you folks back already?”

”Say, now!” began Ray. ”What in Sam Hill! Are you playing alligator, or mermaid, or--”

”Playing!” I said. ”I've had no time for play.” With one hand I was nursing the heavy cylinder that I now carried under my s.h.i.+rt.

”And what have you been doing?” demanded Norris, eyes big with perplexity.

And Carlos appeared no less mystified.

”I've been visiting the gold mine,” I said simply.

Even Ray could not resist a look over to that spot in the stream where I had appeared to them out of the water.

”I thought I heard you whistle,” he said.

”Dreaming some more,” I suggested.

Norris got a long stick and began poking in the bottom of of the creek.

”Oh, not that way,” I told him. ”You have to say 'Open Sesame.'”

”Now look here, open up!” pressed Norris, dropping his pole.

”All right,” I returned. And I produced the cylinder of bamboo.

”Well I'll--!” began Norris, hefting the thing. ”Say, there's sure something heavy in that thing. Where'd you--?” And again his eyes turned quizzically toward the water.

”You know what I told you this morning,” broke in Ray, taking the section of bamboo in his turn of scrutiny.

”Yes,” a.s.sented Norris, ”you said Wayne would have it all figured out--what became of Duran--by the time we came back. And that's one reason why I was ready to come back as soon as I found those two little colors.”

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