“Hold on a minute,” said Clay, as Ike took the torn scrap of paper. “If those men opened and read your uncle’s letter, they had no need to go clear to Chicago to try to make you tell them what was in it, and then follow you clear up here again on the same errand when they already knew all you knew of the letter’s contents—more, in fact, for they had the piece they had torn off which you had never seen.”
“Put like a lawyer’s question,” exclaimed the Kid, admiringly.
“Very cute question, Clay,” agreed Ike, “but easy to answer. My uncle does not live in America long enough to learn to read and write English. He writes to me in Hebrew. Them fellows think the same as Mr. Kid, that the letter’s a kind of cipher and that I’ve got the key to it. That’s why they keep after me all the time and try to make so much trouble. This piece, Mr. Kid finds, just tells how to find Rainbow Bend. Well, boys, that’s all I know, and now I think I go out for a little walk and get some fresh air.”
“That clears up some of the mystery,” said Clay, thoughtfully, “but there are two things unexplained yet. Who put that strange notice of our expecting to take this Yukon trip in the Chicago paper?”
“I think, perhaps,” said Case, musingly, “that Bill did that himself. He had been listening to our talking about the trip, and he thought that notice would make a good excuse for Jud to call on us and try to arrange passage for the two of them.”
“That’s as good a guess as any,” Clay agreed. “The other mystery is, what is the treasure, where is it, and how are we to find it? What do you think about it, Mr. Yukon Kid?”
“I think the old man just dreamed it,” said the Kid, bluntly. “Likely the lonely life and the long darkness weakened him in his head and he got to imagining things. There’s not enough gold around here to gild a baby’s tooth. It isn’t likely gold ground at the best. On top of that, about every man who has gone up the Yukon has prospected here. If the snow was off the ground you could see more prospect holes than you would care to count in these two coves. There’s iron and coal in that mountain, no doubt, and, maybe, the old man got his idea of a treasure from them. But they are valueless until we get railroads into this country. The only treasure around here is these furs here in the Rambler. You’ve got reason to be satisfied with them.”
CHAPTER XXIII
SOLVING THE MYSTERY
Ike did not return until dinner was nearly over. He wore a brave front, but his eyes and lids were very red and the boys knew as well as if he had told them that he had found his uncle’s grave and had been grieving over the gentle old man beneath the mound of stones, but the little lad bore up under his burden of sorrow with a surface of cheerfulness that the boys marveled at.