Hunting for hidden gold

by Franklin W. Dixon

"I went to the door and opened it, and just then I saw a flash in the dark and then I heard a gun go off. I jumped back into the cabin quick and I could hear the bullet go plunk into the wood at the side of the door. Next minute there was a regular gunfight under way. A gang of toughs from town had heard about our gold and had come up to rob us.

"Well, sir, they surrounded our camp half the night and it looked as if we was out of luck. There was the four bags of gold, everythin' we had in the world, and there was them bandits outside, ready to shoot us if we showed our noses out the door. And our ammunition was givin' out too. We knew we didn't have much chance.

"Finally, Dawson said the only thing to do was for one of us to try and get outside and hide the gold. There was no use hidin' it in the cabin, for they'd be sure to find it. He volunteered to try and reach the mine and hide it underground somewhere. So we figgered it out and decided that was our only chance. Mebbe the bandits might catch him and get the gold, but if we kept it in the cabin they'd be sure to get it anyway, so we figgered we'd better risk it.

"Dawson had lots of nerve. That's one thing I'll say for him although I'll never forgive him for what he done afterward. He had nerve, and somehow I could never believe he really meant to double-cross us at the time. We waited until the shootin' had died down, and along about three o'clock in the mornin', when everythin' was mighty dark, Dawson let himself out the back window. He got out all right, and nobody saw him, and how he ever got through the ring of bandits around the place I never could tell. He had the four bags of gold with him, and mighty heavy they were too. The last we knew, he was creepin' across the rocks toward the shaft. And that was the last we ever saw or heard of him."

"He ran away?" exclaimed the boys.

"He just cleared out. And he was a fellow any of us would have trusted right to the last. But it only goes to show you can't trust nobody when there's forty or fifty thousand dollars' worth of gold in his hands. We never heard of him again."

"But what about the bandits?"

"After we thought Dawson must have hidden the gold all right, we waited till mornin' and then hung a white handkerchief out the window and gave ourselves up. The bandits came swarmin' in—there was about ten of 'em. One of them was only a young chap, "Black Pepper" they called him, for his real name was Pepperill. He was only a young chap, but a tougher and more cold-blooded fellow I never hope to meet. When they searched the cabin and found that Dawson was gone and the gold with him they was as mad as a nest of hornets. They raved and turned the whole cabin upside down huntin' for that gold, but it didn't do them no good. The gold was gone. So finally they went away, and we set out to hunt for Dawson. But he was gone.

"He wasn't in the mine, although we found footprints down on one of the levels that looked like his, but we couldn't find him anywhere. And there was no gold. Well, even then we couldn't imagine he'd cleared out on us and we waited around there for nearly a week tryin' to find him and hopin' he'd show up sometime. But he never showed up. He had just cleared out."

"That was a dirty trick!" exclaimed Joe indignantly.