“I don’t blame you,” said Jim.
“But couldn’t you have waited until these grub-stakers had gotten out of the way, and then dug up your gold, and got away with it?” asked Bob.
“Son, you don’t know those fellows!” exclaimed the miner. “They’ll hang around that locality for more’n a year waiting for me to come back and give ’em a clew. It won’t do. They’re too sharp. I had to come away without the nuggets, and now we’ve got to fool ’em, and get that gold when they don’t know it. Besides, it’s going to be some job to get into that valley I reckon, even with an airship, though I never saw one of the contraptions.”
“I guess we can manage that part of it,” said Jerry with a smile, as he thought of their fine craft of the clouds. “But what happened when you found you were in danger of being robbed?”
“What happened? Why, I made up my mind I needed help, and I at once set out to hike it to my friend Jim Nestor. I knew where he was, having had a letter from him. I knew he could advise me. So I left the sixty nuggets of gold hidden near the border, and went for him. Then he——”
“I’ll tell the rest,” interrupted Jim, with a grin. “As soon as I heard Harvey’s story,” the foreman resumed; “I thought of you motor boys at once. ‘They’re the chaps for us,’ I said. ‘Let’s go East,’ and East we came and here we are. Now do you boys want to have a try for it?”
“Do we?” cried the three in a chorus, while Jerry added: “We sure do!”
“That’s what!” cried Ned and Bob.
“But do you think you can find this valley again?” asked Jerry.