“Four hundred+1500-30,” read Jim. “I can add it up if that will do any good.”
“The best thing we can do,” said Jeems, the philosopher, “is to go to bed and tackle this proposition in the morning.”
This the boys did, but it was a hard thing for them to get to sleep, so busy were their brains, and they all dreamed diagram, mysterious combinations of figures and lines. When they awoke the next morning, it was with the same happy sense of anticipation that the small boy wakes up on the morning of the glorious Fourth.
As soon as it was light enough to see, the Frontier Boys started out to solve the location of the Lost Mine. Each one had a copy of the diagram with him, also a pick or a shovel, and powder for blasting. Jim and Juarez worked together, Tom and Jo also, while Jeems Howell was a lone prospector, and it seemed indeed like old times to him.
For a short ways they went all together up the shallow valley; then, after going a half mile, they took separate courses, Jim and Juarez following the line of the overgrown trail up the valley, and Jeems striking straight up the slope of the mountain. Tom and Jo wandered around eagerly and inconsequentially, expecting to see the opening to the Lost Mine at any moment.
Jeems was the first to make a discovery of importance, but bearing only indirectly on the location of the mine. After climbing up about five hundred feet he saw that there had been a tremendous landslide down the southern slope of the mountain.
“Some earthquake did that,” he said, “and not very recently either. I bet that the lost mine is under the slide.” Just then he heard Jim’s voice in a faint halloo below him. He felt sure that they had made a discovery likewise. He strode eagerly down the slope to tell Jim and Juarez what he had found out, and to see about their discovery.
“We have found part of the cabin that’s in the diagram,” cried Juarez as soon as Jeems hove in sight.
“It was the landslide did that,” declared Jeems, and he told them of his discovery. The boys were jubilant, and rightly so, for at last they had struck the trail.
The point of departure had been found, for a heavy storm had uncovered one end of a demolished cabin, over which a part of the landslide had swept.