He attacked the hole in the earth again, and for a while he shoveled industriously, but it soon became apparent that they had found all of the gold that had been buried in that place.
"I guess we got it all," he said, flinging the shovel to one side. "All the outlaws will find here will be a hole in the ground—a big one."
"I'd like to be listening in when they come to look for their treasure. They'll be as mad as hornets."
Joe picked up his two sacks of gold.
"Better let me carry one of yours," he suggested. "You have the flashlight to carry. It'll be awkward for you."
"I'd forgotten about the light," Frank agreed. "All right."
He passed over one of the sacks he had been carrying, and then bent down to pick up the flashlight that had been resting on the ground.
"And now," he said, "we'll leave the blue room. It isn't as blue as Black Pepper and his gang will be when they come to visit the place."
The boys looked at the hole in the ground and chuckled. They were just about to turn, ready to leave, when they heard a sound from the passage leading into the chamber.
This time they knew it was no trick of the imagination. They could sense plainly that some one was standing there. Some one had crept up through the tunnel, unheard, and was even then standing silently in the darkness.