The Bungalow Boys Along the Yukon, John Henry Goldfrap [surface ebook reader TXT] 📗

them closely in billowy folds of white. On the mountain top on which they had halted, the mist was peculiarly dense and heavy.

"Well, Jack," said Tom, "we're in cloudland, all right. Are you in favor of waiting till the clouds roll by or striking out for camp?"

Jack at once declared for the latter course. Mr. Dacre's illness and Sandy's indisposition had not a little to do with Tom's falling in with this plan. He was anxious not to remain away longer than necessary for, as he knew, the river fevers sometimes resulted quite seriously.

Accordingly, the blankets were rolled up, some meat cut from the deer, canteens filled at a nearby spring, and the march back to the river begun. The fog still hung heavy and dense, and the boys strode along through the steamy vapor talking little, but saving their wind and their strength for the rough stony ground they were traveling over.

About noon the mist lifted and rolled away like a drop-curtain in a theater. And it was then that the boys made a disquieting discovery. The general scenery adjacent to the trapping line was familiar to them. But the spot which they now had reached held nothing that struck a reminiscent note.

Instead of being surrounded by noble forests of huge, somber trees, they were in a place that resembled more the scenery found in the "Bad Lands" than anything else the boys could call to mind. Grotesque piles of rocky hills, pinnacled like cathedrals and minsters, with here and there the semblance of some strangely formed animal, surrounded them on every side.

Towering columns and immense, fantastically-shaped masses of clay, suggesting pre-historic monsters of the pre-glacial period, rocky cliffs resembling enchanted castles,—these were only a few of the remarkable features of the section of the country into which they had strayed.

They looked about them with awe. The strata of the various weird formations were brilliantly tinted with blue, red, white, yellow and other colors mingled and mixed like the hues of a kaleidoscope. The utter barrenness of the place suggested a city of the dead, untrodden by man or beast for centuries.

"Where under the sun have we wandered?" asked Jack in an awed tone, gazing about with wonderment not untinged with alarm.

"I've not the slightest idea. We've never even seen a suggestion of such country on our hunting excursions off the trapping line. We must have strayed far off our course."

"But the compass?"

"I followed what should have been our direction," declared Tom. "I cannot understand this at all."

"Nor can I. Let's have a look at that compass."

Tom fished it out of his pocket and extended it. He glanced at the dial and then uttered a cry of astonishment. The needle was dipping and plunging and behaving in a very odd manner.

"Gracious, what's the matter with the thing? Is it bewitched?" gasped Jack.

"It is certainly behaving in a very mysterious fashion. Something must have deflected it and led us out of our way."

"What could have done this?"

"I don't know, unless—hullo!"

Tom stooped and picked up a bit of stone which glittered with bright, shining particles.

"Iron pyrites!" he exclaimed. "I remember the professor back at school showing some to the geology class. No wonder the needle was deflected! Look, Jack, those cliffs yonder are almost solid masses of pyrites!"

"And those deposits of iron switched the needle of the compass?"

"Beyond a doubt."

"Then we are lost."

"I don't like to say that."

"But we are far out of our way?"

"No question of it."

"How far?"

"I have no idea. It's a nasty predicament, Jack, but we'll get out of it, don't worry."

"But you haven't any idea in which direction to go?"

"No; we must scout around and try to get our bearings. I would suggest that we strike out for that high hill yonder that will place a ridge between us and the pyrites cliffs, and perhaps the compass will behave normally."

They struck off in the direction that Tom indicated. But it was hard traveling in that broken, uncanny country into which they had wandered in such a strange manner. The hill, too, was further than they thought, the clear air being deceptive. But dripping with perspiration and not a little anxious at heart, they gained it at last.

As Tom placed his hand in his pocket to draw out the compass, he almost let the instrument drop to the ground.

A sudden sound had broken the stillness of the place. It was a sound that ordinarily would have caused confidence in the hearers. But heard under the circumstances in which it was, it was so unexpected, so out of keeping with the wild surroundings, that it startled and shocked them both.

It was the sound of laughter.

CHAPTER XXV.

THE MYSTERIOUS MEN.

There could be no mistake about it. It was human laughter that they had heard. It has been said that his ability to laugh is what chiefly distinguishes man from other animals and it is an undeniable fact that the sound resembles no other in nature.

The laughter they had heard was not loud, but it was none the less genuine and hearty on that account. Jack gripped Tom's arm and asked in an affrighted whisper:

"What does it mean, Tom?"

"It means that somebody is pleased over something," replied Tom, who, despite the light tone of his reply, was no less agitated than his companion, "but who can he be?"

"One thing is certain, it isn't a native, for they only grin without making any racket over it."

The boys stood side by side, and grasping their rifles firmly, peered toward a thick clump of fir woods from whence the sound had proceeded. But no more laughter came. Instead, the branches parted and coming toward them they distinguished the forms of three men.

Suddenly the hearty mirth broke out once more, and the shoulders of one of the three were seen to bob up and down as if his mirth was unrestrainable. But this time the outburst was roughly checked.

"Shut up, Rufus!" exclaimed one of the men angrily. "A joke lasts you longer than anybody I ever saw."

"Wha's dat? Oh, lawdy! Look-ee, boss! Dere's two white boys!"

It was a short, stocky negro who gasped out these words, his lower jaw dropping in a comical manner as he stared at them as though they had been beings from another world. For their part, the boys were no less astonished at this encounter.

The negro's exclamation was the first apprisal that his two white companions had of the boys' presence on the scene, and their surprise appeared no less than his. They were both rough, wild-looking fellows, with shaggy, unkempt beards and rough clothes with knee boots. Both carried shovels and tin pans, while the negro bore a pick and other mining tools. The boys guessed at once that the men were prospectors.

"Howdy, pards," exclaimed one of the men, coming toward the boys with extended hand, "what in the name of time air you doin' roun' these diggin's?"

"Glad to meet you," said Tom, taking the proffered hand and introducing his brother and himself. He then explained his plight. Both men raised their eyebrows as they listened, and the negro rolled his eyes in an odd fashion.

"Well, I'll be hanged," exclaimed the companion of the man who had first addressed the boys. "That's a tarnation bad fix and no mistake, ain't it, Jim?"

"It sure is, Seth," replied the other, "an' I ain't got no idea of the track they ought to take, seem' as we come inter this country from the other way."

Jim Stapleton, for that was his name, pulled out a pipe and lit it. His companion, Seth Ingalls, shook his head as if in meditation. Then the two men whispered together for a time while the negro surveyed the boys with a blank expression. There was something about that look that puzzled them. It was not till afterward that they were to learn what it meant. The black man appeared to be about to speak, when the two men, who had withdrawn a little for their confab, came back.

"How come you so far from the river?" asked Jim, and Tom for a passing moment thought he detected suspicion in his tones.

"As I told you, to look after our trap line," said Tom.

"Humph! This is a funny time of the year to go trapping."

Tom, omitting all the details that he could, explained the reason for the line being set out before the early winter closed in. If the man had been suspicious, as Tom had for an instant fancied, the answer appeared to lull such thoughts.

"We were foolish to start off in that fog," went on Tom, "but of course I'd no idea that the compass would betray us like it did."

The men made no rejoinder to this. Then Jim spoke up and in his rough voice told the boys that they were camped not far from there and would be glad to make them welcome if they cared to come along.

The boys, after some hesitation, accepted this proposition. For one thing they were full of youthful curiosity concerning these men, and in the second place, after their experiences of the morning they did not feel inclined to resume their journey, which now bade fair to be a long and arduous one, till they had had some rest.

The men explained that they had been out that morning with the negro Rufus, who acted as cook and did the rough work about the camp, on a prospecting expedition to a distant ridge. But, explained Jim Stapleton, at their home camp lay the real object of their quest in these wild and solitary hills.

"We're the luckiest fellows in the whole world," exclaimed Jim, swinging his arms in wild gesticulation. "We'll be the richest people in America, in Europe, in the whole world! The gold is not far off now. We'll be greater than Solomon in all his glory. We'll be——"

"Here, here, choke off, will you, Jim Stapleton," growled his companion in a taciturn tone.

The boys gazed at the two men in astonishment. The outburst of Jim Stapleton seemed more like the ravings of an unbalanced mind than the speech of a well disciplined one. His eyes had flashed as he spoke, with a wild sort of light and his gesticulations were extravagant. Tom was about to speak, but in the very act his eye caught that of Rufus, the negro cook. To his astonishment the black man's left eye closed in a swift but unmistakable wink that said as plainly as words, "Say nothing."

Jack, who was not so alert as his brother, had noticed none of this by-play, but he, too, had been astonished at the miner's outburst. As for Tom, a suspicion shot into his mind that was to bear fruit in the near future.

The gruff rebuke of Seth Ingalls seemed to have had its effect upon his companion, for Jim Stapleton said no more as they trudged on, and ere long they came in sight of what was the gold-seekers' headquarters.

Among piled up masses of huge rocks and boulders, the two men had found a retreat which could not have been better suited to their purposes if it had been built to order. It consisted in a general way of a cavern about a dozen yards in depth and one-fourth as broad and high, with an entrance that an ordinary sized man could pass through by slightly stooping.

The floor, walls and ceiling were of solid rock, but an opening must have existed in the rear, for a fire was smouldering in that portion of the cavern, with some sort of food cooking above it in a huge iron pot, and the smoke was curling up and vanishing through some unseen aperture.

Into this curious home,