Suddenly Joe bent over to examine a hole the size of a lead pencil in the ice. Bending over he chipped away at the ice for a second, then, straightening up, gave out a wild shout.
“Whoopee!”
He held in his hand a splendid solitaire.
“Melted its way into the ice,” he explained.
A careful search revealed other such holes. After two hours the boys had succeeded in securing twenty-eight stones.
When they felt they had rescued the last one, they turned toward camp.
“We’re rich,” laughed Joe. “Twenty thousand dollars worth of cut stones and fifty thousand worth of reindeer.”
“Rich for a day,” Curlie laughed back. “The stones we must turn in to the customs department and the reindeer herd must be restored to its rightful owners. I must get McGregor, the deputy, on the air at once and find out about that.”
Three weeks later the two boys were once more on the Valdez Glacier, just one day’s journey from the port where they might catch a boat for Seattle and the great “Outside.” Their adventures on the Yukon Trail were about at an end.
One question remained unsolved: Who was the Whisperer and where was she? It had been established as a fact that the outlaw was the leader of the band of smugglers. Since he had been deprived of his illegal gains by the loyal action of Munson, the explorer, in breaking up his band, he had planned a cruel revenge—that of destroying his supply station and leaving him with his faithful companions to starve.