Barry met him with a grin on the bank and helped him peel off his garments.
"Struck it rich, hey?" chuckled the skipper, amused out of his scowling disgust. "Find any gold?"
"Gold color, Barry, and they bite like gold-bugs!" chirped Little, irrepressible even in his discomfort; for red ants bite hard and deep. "How about you?" he shouted over his shoulder, as he floundered into the water to rid himself of his tiny tormentors.
"I believe the man's right," returned Barry. "I never saw gold washing done, but if there's any gold in this river it's a long way from here. It don't look like gold sand to me."
Little emerged from his bath and sluiced out his clothes. While dressing, he began to see something more than a temporary fault in the search for Houten's gold. These few men from the post were undoubtedly loyal to his employer and Barry's; but why they should have been sent to this place to make a palpable bluff at gold mining, even to building huts and carrying up washing gear and food, beat him as a problem. And Barry was no clearer on the matter.
"I believe I begin to see why Leyden showed such cocksureness," muttered Barry, taking his companion's arm and returning to the huts. He shouted to the man in the river to come out and gave orders for the others to be released; then, with a quiet hint to his own crew to keep an unobtrusive watch over the liberated men, he and Little walked upstream to a piece of high ground, and there they sat down to discuss the situation where they had under their eyes every yard of country within a five-mile radius.
Upstream the river speedily dwindled to a creek, and its headwaters were apparently fed out of a maze of low jungle land that looked feverish and uninviting. Beyond the stream, the land rolled away for a mile in smoothly alternating downs and hills; on the near side, two miles of open country lay spread before them, fringed at that distance by a dark and luxuriant forest of stout trees. In the direction from which they had come, the river ran into the narrow pass, and disappeared from view; but the nature of the country beyond was well known to them by having passed through most of it by bright moonlight.
"I don't mind being fooled like this, but what gets me is Vandersee's attitude again," remarked Barry, with his eyes roving keenly over the stretch of land that terminated in the forest.
"That's what I can't understand," agreed Little. "He knows so much that he must know about this fake. If he does, what could be his object in letting us come up here?"
"It beats me, Little," the skipper grunted. His gaze had fixed upon a point in the forest fringe, and for a moment he said no more; then he said with sudden interest: