THE CATASTROPHE
"Now, the question is, what shall we do with our captives?" and Mr. Conroyal glanced a little anxiously around the circle of faces that had gathered about him, a short time after all the robbers had been safely bound. "We cannot hang them, as they deserve, and we have not food enough to keep them, and it will be hardly safe to turn them loose. What do you think we had better do, Ham?" and he turned to Hammer Jones.
"First off," answered Ham, "we'd better make a raid on their camp an' git all their hosses an' supplies. Maybe that'll answer th' food question; for, I reckon, they must have come well supplied, seein' that Ugger an' Quinley would have plenty of gold-dust tew buy with."
"Good," promptly declared Mr. Conroyal. "You and Rex and Dill and Dickson make that raid at once on their camp, which, I fancy, you will find somewhere near the Devil's Slide."
Ham proved to be right; for, when he and the men who went with him, returned from the raid, some two hours later, they had with them fifteen horses, ten of which were heavily laden with food and other camp supplies, and one prisoner, the man who had been left to guard the camp.
"Now, I reckon, we've got them all, twenty-tew livin' an' tew dead," Ham declared, as he bound his prisoner and placed him with the other captives: "an' right whar we can keep them out of mischief. Thar's plenty of food for all, Con," and he turned to Conroyal, "leastwise for a few days, so th' food problem is settled. Now, what are you proposin' of dewin'? We want tew git th' gold an' git out of here as soon as we can," and he lowered his voice.
"I can't see but one thing for us to do, Ham," Mr. Conroyal answered, "and that is to keep a guard over the prisoners, while the rest of us get the gold out; and then, when we've got the gold, to turn them loose in the mountains, without weapons or horses, and make for home as fast as we can. We've been considering the problem, while you were after the horses and camp supplies, and that is the conclusion that we have come to. How does it strike you?"
"'Bout right, under th' circumstances," answered Ham. "An' th' sooner we git things a-goin' ag'in th' better. I'm gettin' some anxious tew git back intew that cave."
"We'll get busy at once," declared Mr. Conroyal. "But first, I reckon, we ought to bury them two corpses. 'Twouldn't be Christian to leave them to rot a-top the ground or to be ate up by wolves."
"Shore," agreed Ham. "Come on, Rex. We're th' responsible fellers, an', I reckon, it's up tew us tew dig th' grave. We'll put 'em both in one grave," and he picked up a pick and shovel and started to where the body of Quinley lay.
In a short time the two men had the grave dug.
"Now for the bodies," and Ham caught hold of Quinley and turned the body over. "Wal, I swun!" and he stared down at the left hand. The little finger had been recently shot away and the wound was still roughly bandaged. "So y'ur th' feller that I owe a finger tew. Wal, here it is," and he thrust his hand into his pocket and pulled out the little buckskin-wrapped parcel, containing the little finger that he had shot from the unknown hand the night they were encamped on the shore of Goose Neck Lake, and laid it down on the corpse.
"Now, I reckon, we'll have to see if you have any of that stolen gold-dust left," and Ham began a search of the body, which resulted in the finding of a heavily laden gold-belt buckled around the waist, next to the skin.
Ham at once appropriated this; and then the two men lowered the body into the grave. A similar belt, also well-filled with gold-dust, was found around the body of Bill Ugger. Ham unbuckled this belt and placed it with the other. Then he and Rex lifted the body of Ugger and carried it to the grave and lowered it down on top of the body of Quinley; and then filled the grave with broken pieces of rocks and dirt, to prevent the wolves from digging up the bodies.
"Th' way of th' transgresser is hard, accordin' tew th' good book," and Ham's eyes rested thoughtfully on that lonely new-made grave. "An' shore th' end of them tew 'pears tew bear out th' good book. Wal, th' dead is dead, an' that's all thar is tew it. Now, for th' livin'," and he turned from the grave and walked up to where Mr. and Mrs. Dickson were standing, the two confiscated gold-belts in his hand.
"Here, Dick, I reckon, is a part of th' gold them skunks got from you," and he handed the two belts to Dickson. "Leastwise we got them from their bodies."
But Mr. and Mrs. Dickson refused to take the gold and insisted that it be placed in the common fund, to be shared by all alike, so Ham turned the two gold-belts over to Mr. Conroyal.
The camp was now placed under the strictest discipline. Ten of the prisoners were compelled to assist in getting the gold from the cave. The others were kept bound and under constant guard, night and day, all except Pedro, who, during the day, was forced to do the cooking and the camp work for all, while at night he was securely bound and returned to his place with the other prisoners.
Thus the work of getting the gold out of the cave went steadily on for five days, every one, even Mrs. Dickson, working to the very limit of his or her endurance. Then came the night of the catastrophe.
The gold, as fast as it was taken out of the cave, was carried, in sacks made from blankets, to the opening in the wall of rock that gave entrance to Crooked Arm Gulch, and from there lowered to the ground with ropes. Each night all the workers returned to the camp under the Big Tree. On this night, the sixth night from the day of the finding of the Cave of Gold, about midnight, there suddenly swept through the air above them one of those rare, for that time of the year, but often very violent, mountain storms.
For an hour the water fell out of the skies, as if poured from an enormous bucket. The wind blew, until it seemed almost to shake the solid mountains themselves, while vivid glares of lightning blinded the eyes and heavy peals of thunder deafened the ears. Then came a lull in the violence of the storm, as if the elements had paused to gather themselves for a last supreme effort, followed almost instantly by a glare of lightning so vivid, that, for the moment, it seemed as if the whole world was ablaze, and a shock of thunder, so appalling, that everyone leaped from his blanket and stood staring with blanched face and frightened eyes around him, not knowing what awful thing was happening. For two or three minutes the dreadful sounds continued, as if mountains were being torn up by the roots and thrown crashing to the earth again, while the ground shook and trembled beneath their feet, as if the earth had the ague. Then, only the roar of the falling rain and the rushing of the wind through the limbs of the Big Tree above their heads, was heard. Fifteen minutes later the rain had ceased, the wind had died down, the clouds had swept by, and the stars were shining again in a clear sky.
The next morning, when our friends, on their way to the Cave of Gold, reached the narrow shelf of rock in Crooked Arm Gulch, from which they had had their first view of the Golden Elbow, an astonishing sight met their eyes.
The great arch, overhanging the entrance to the Cave of Gold, with its millions of tons of superincumbent rocks, had given away, and the whole of that side of the gulch, nearly a thousand feet high and for a couple of hundred feet on either side, had split off and fallen in a great mass of rocks, hundreds of feet high, where the day before had been the entrance to the dead miner's marvelous Cave of Gold.
For a number of minutes all stood staring at this unexpected and astounding sight in awed silence. No wonder it had sounded the night before as if mountains were being torn up and thrown down again! No wonder the ground beneath them had shook and trembled from the impact of those millions of tons of rocks!
"Gosh! I'm glad I ain't in that Cave of Gold!" and Ham turned an awed face to the others. "If that storm had comed up in th' daytime, some on us might be in thar right now. I reckon we've got all th' gold th' Lord intended us tew git, an' now we'd better git for home."
"Well, if that was the Lord's work, He has been mighty accommodating to wait until we got all the gold we need," and Mr. Conroyal smiled. "I was thinking last night that we had about enough, and had better be starting for home. Mighty curious place, that Cave of Gold; and I have been wondering quite a bit how the gold got into it; and this is about the way I figure it out:
"Thousands of years ago, how many thousands God alone knows, there must have been a great river pouring through Lot's Canyon, with its bed hundreds of feet below the present bottom of the canyon; and, at that time, there must also have been a powerful stream of water flowing through this gulch, and emptying into the river in Lot's Canyon, through a great hole worn through the solid wall of rock, which is now completely hidden under the rocks that have fallen down into the gulch during the ages since both rivers dried up. Now, in making that turn," and he pointed to where the Golden Elbow had been, "I figure that the water struck a soft ledge of gold-bearing rock, and gradually scooped out a big cave right in the point of the turn, and, of course, as the gold was washed out of the rock, it would fall to the bottom of the cave, and, being in quite large chunks, it was too heavy for the action of the water to carry it out of the cave, while the water would carry out nearly all the other dirt and gravel, thus leaving the bottom of the cave covered with gold nuggets, the way we found it. And, after the river had dried up, rocks from the arch at the entrance to the cave would fall off, and little by little fill up the entrance and form the big arch we found. Now, that's about the way the gold came into the cave, according to my figureing. What's your idea, Rad?" and Mr. Conroyal turned to Rad Randolph.
"I think that you've hit it about right, Con," answered Mr. Randolph. "But, now that there is no hope of getting any more gold out of that cave, I am getting powerful anxious to make a start for home with what we have got. Let's go back to the Big Tree at once and get agoing homeward as soon as we can."
"Hurrah for home!" yelled Thure, starting for the opening out of Crooked Arm Gulch. "I'd rather see home now than another Cave of Gold."
In a few minutes all were back in the camp under the Big Tree; and preparations for the start homeward were begun at once.
In three hours everything was ready for the journey. The gold, there was fifty bags of it, each weighing about one hundred pounds, was packed on the fifteen horses they had secured from the robbers. Mrs. Dickson was given one of the other horses to ride, and the food and the camp supplies were packed on the remaining five horses.
The twenty-two prisoners were now all gathered in a bunch under the Big Tree, and the hands of each man strongly tied behind his back. Then Mr. Conroyal stepped out in front of them.
"You cowardly pack of scoundrels," he said, "if we could, we would gladly take you to where we could deliver you up to the justice you so richly deserve; but, under existing circumstances, that is impossible; and so we have decided to leave you here, bound as you now are, without weapons of any kind, but with food enough to last you three days, which ought to be enough to keep you until you can get to one of the mining-camps. Doubtless, by working real hard, you can manage to get the hands of one of you untied in course of the next two or three hours, and then he can soon untie the hands of the others, and you can start for one of the mining-camps as soon as you please. But," Mr. Conroyal spoke slowly, so that every man could understand every word that he uttered, "do not, if you value your lives, follow our trail. We will shoot, and shoot to kill, on sight. Now, that is all I have to say to you, except," and he grinned joyously, "to thank you for bringing us those fifteen horses and for your help in getting out the gold. I do not know what we would have done without the horses and without your help. Hope this will learn you to give up trying to steal gold and start you to digging for it," and he turned and led the little company down the canyon, bound, at last, for home.