The boy was down on his knees, scooping at something with his hands. The others looked.
Then they saw what they had come so far to seek. Fred's pick had pierced through a canvas bag, buried a short distance below the frozen surface. It was a bag of gold nuggets, and they lay scattered about in the dirt.
"The treasure!" cried Fred. "Here it is! I have found it!"
And so he had. Almost on the verge of failure he had unearthed the gold buried so long before by the old German, Max Stults!
CHAPTER XVII
THE SPYING INDIAN
The adventurers could hardly believe their good luck. Fred, still on his knees, scooped out handful after handful of the dull yellow nuggets, which meant so much to him and to them all. His thoughts went back to the humble home he had left, to his crippled father, and his toiling mother. Now they could have peace, comfort and happiness. But, better than all, his father could now be assured of a cure. No wonder it seemed too good to be true.
But it was no dream. The gold was actually there. There were two score sacks of it, as they soon discovered, for it did not take the three of them long to get it from the hiding place. Only one had been broken by Fred's pick, and the nuggets were carefully gathered up.
"Good for you, Fred!" exclaimed Jerry, as he and his father helped pile the gold carefully to one side. "You won out, but I had begun to think we were going to fail."