"Yep," rejoined Cal, "if we could, we'd reach Big Oak Flat in jig time. This here flume comes out thereabouts."
"Who built it?" inquired Nat, gazing at the moss-grown contrivance through which the water was rushing at a rapid rate. There had been a cloudburst on a distant mountain and the stream was yellow and turbid. At other times, so Cal informed them, the flume was almost dry.
"Why," said Cal, in reply to Nat's question, "it was put up by some fellows who thought they saw money in lumbering here. That was after the mines petered out. But it was too far to a market and after working it a while they left. We've always let the flume stand, as it is useful to carry off the overflow from the river above."
Somehow sleep wouldn't come to Joe. Try as he would he could not doze off. He counted sheep jumping over a fence, kept tab of bees issuing from a hive and tried a dozen other infallible recipes for inducing slumber. But they wouldn't work. Nat, after his awakening, had, however, dozed off as peacefully as before.
Suddenly, Joe sat up once more. He had been electrified by the sound of a low voice outside the hut. This time there was no mistake. Some human being was prowling about that lonely place. Who could it be? He was not kept long in doubt. It was the voice of Dayton. Low as it was there was no mistaking it. Joe's heart almost stopped beating as he listened:—
"They're off as sound as so many tops, colonel. All we've got to do is to go in and land the sapphires, and the kid, too."
"You are sure they have them?"
"Of course. Didn't I see them in old Goodale's hut? You always said the old fellow was crazy. I guess you know better now. These cubs blundered into the biggest sapphire find I ever heard of."
Joe was up now, and cautiously creeping about the room. One after another he awoke his sleeping companions. Before arousing Herr Muller, however, he clapped a hand over the German's mouth to check any outcry that the emotional Teuton might feel called upon to utter.
Presently the voices died out and cautiously approaching the window Nat could see in the moonlight half a dozen dark forms further down the canyon. Suddenly a moonbeam glinted brightly on a rifle barrel.