“All in the mine getting out gold!” was the reply.
“They can get it out pretty fast, can’t they?” asked Toombs.
The Indian nodded, and said in a guttural voice that many great heaps of it had already been taken out of the rock and stored in the inner chamber. Toombs’ eyes brightened wickedly at the information.
“And they’re all in there now?” he asked. “All the heaps?”
Sigma nodded again.
“We don’t want anyone watching us,” Toombs explained, “so we must make sure about their all being in the cave. You go through the dry channel and find out if they are all really there, then come to the entrance and signal to me and go back and explain what we have planned—that I am to market the gold, for them and receive half.”
“Now it strikes me,” Jimmie mused, “that if I were in Sigma’s place, I wouldn’t go into that old channel and leave Toombs on the outside, especially if every living person having knowledge of the deposit of gold was on the inside, too!”
The Indian disappeared over the edge of the Devil’s Punch Bowl and made his way to the bottom, pursuing practically the same tactics resorted to by the boys the day before. As soon as he disappeared in the old dry channel, Toombs, who had carefully watched the Indian’s every move, proceeded to follow into the depression.
The man was fat, unwieldy, and out of training, but his greed for gold was so great, his daring so remarkable, that he managed to reach the bottom of the pit with only a few slight bruises. Jimmie lay down at the lip of the pit and regarded him quizzically.
“I’d like to know what the game is,” the boy thought.