“It looks as though it might be five thousand years old,” Frank answered, taking the implement into his hand.
“It looks to me,” Jack declared, “like one of the cave-dweller tools one sees in the Smithsonian Institute at Washington. The scientists declare that such implements were used in the crude mining carried on thousands of years ago. They also state that they were used for beating up Indian corn and refractory wives.”
“Anyway,” Frank laughed, “the presence of the tool here shows that this chamber was never formed by the action of the water. Those old duffers hewed this out, gathering gold, with just such tools as this.”
“And they probably found a good many pounds of gold in every square foot they dug out!” replied Jack.
“Then, look here,” Frank said, “if they hewed out this chamber, they built the dam over the old crevice which turned the water into this channel. Can you imagine a better way of concealing millions of dollars worth of gold? I guess they were next to their jobs, all right!”
“I’ll tell you what it is,” Jack laughed, “when we get back to New York and tell Dad what we’ve discovered, he ought to buy us a transcontinental railroad apiece. We’ve earned it all right!”
Frank looked back toward the narrow incline, and again cast his searchlight over the chamber, which now seemed to them to be a perfect treasure house of virgin gold.
“Did it ever occur to you,” he said grimly, “that we’ve got to get out of this mess before we get back to New York?”
“Yes,” Jack replied, “and we’ve got to make our way out through the continuation of this passage. We couldn’t crawl back up that steep passage in a thousand years!”
“And Harry lays back there with a broken arm,” Jack added ruefully. “We should have taken the time to give the boy a little ‘first-aid’ before we started out on this excursion. He must be suffering.”