The Bungalow Boys Along the Yukon
Page 27
CHAPTER XXVII.
IN NEED OF A FRIEND.
Tom's guess had hit the nail on the head. It was all true. JimStapleton and Seth Ingalls were not the first men to have their brainsturned by an insatiable lust for gold. On every other subjectperfectly normal, they were insane on this one topic.
It was the peculiar light that shone in Stapleton's eyes when he spokeof the yellow metal that had first excited Tom's doubts. Seth Ingalls'sullen, taciturn manner had shown that he was afflicted with adifferent form of the same mania. In Jim Stapleton's case it took thetwist of a desire to confide in the boys his glorious prospects. InSeth Ingalls the same malady induced a dark, secretive manner and asuspicion that everybody was in search of their secret.
The alarming situation of our two young friends may be thus summed up.They were in the hands of two desperate and powerful lunatics, whoalmost assuredly would not let them depart until the fabulous depositof gold was discovered. The boys did not dare even to mention thesubject of leaving the cavern or the camp, for fear of arousing themen's suspicions, in which case it appeared almost certain that thetwo crazed miners would unhesitatingly forcibly restrain them or killthem.
Both of the lads recalled reading of such cases, but Jim Stapleton andSeth Ingalls were the first living examples of the gold seeking formof insanity with which they had come in contact. There had not been aword of fiction in Jim Stapleton's account of how he came by thechart, by means of which he and his friend Ingalls had joined forcesand started on their insane quest. It was all as true as gospel.
The ten years of search in the wild solitudes of the north, theirhopes, their disappointments, their privations had turned theirbrains. Lured on by their dazzling vision of wealth beyond the dreamsof avarice, they had kept up, with an insane persistence, theirsearch, till at last they had stumbled across this spot back of theFrying Pan Range which did, in very fact, look like the site of thenew Golconda as described on the old, time-yellowed map.
The main defect of the whole scheme had been detected by Tom. Theoriginal plan had been the work of a man whose brain was admittedlyturned by sufferings and hardships. It possessed, moreover, oneinherent flaw, and that was that while the Frying Pan Range wasindicated in a general manner on the map, the precise spot in whichthe gold lay was not set forth. It might have been anywhere along thefour hundred miles of solitary, unexplored country the rangetraversed.
It was apparent to Tom that the two men, driven half insane by theirlong hunt, had taken for granted when they came across the spot inwhich they were now encamped, that they had at last struck El Dorado.Whether the objections that had at once flashed into his mind had everoccurred to them, or whether they had willfully ignored them, temptedbeyond their judgment by the _ignis fatuus_ of the gold hunters' lust,mattered little. Tom was certain that they had made a woeful mistakeand were miles from the hiding place of the fabled gold, even if sucha place had ever existed.
Granting that the gold mine described on the chart did exist, onlychance could have given them success. But accompanied by theirfaithful black, whose brain alone had not given way under thecontinued strain, they had stuck to the quest till their judgment waswarped and they were ready to accept almost any site that bore even afancied resemblance to the blurred outlines of the dead miner's map.
In nothing, in fact, was their mental unsoundness more startlinglyindicated as in their determination that this was the right place onwhich they had stumbled, despite the almost self-evident proofs thatit was not.
They had been established in the cavern for some three months when Tomand Jack had so unfortunately stumbled upon them. When theyencountered the boys and held that whispered consultation, the livesof our two young friends had literally hung in the balance. For theobject of that talk was whether they should despatch the boysforthwith and thus render them incapable of spreading the secret (forthey were convinced they were spies sent out by fancied enemies), orwhether they should take them into their confidence and hold themprisoners till they reached the gold. This latter event they fanciedwas not far distant, and they finally decided to hasten its coming byholding the lads captives and making them do their share of the work.
In their warped minds this course was quite justifiable, as theyintended, when they struck the vast wealth they imagined awaited them,to reimburse the lads a thousandfold for their labors. This was themain cause of their sparing the boys' lives. They needed extra help toenable them to reach their fancied gold quickly and therefore theydecided not to slay them outright.
The boys knew that this success would, in all human probability, neverbe attained, while the men were equally certain that the achievementof their golden hopes was but a few days or weeks distant at most.
Their only course, they decided, after a necessarily hasty whisperedconsultation, was to pretend to fall in with whatever plan the crazygold hunters might propose to them, and work or do whatever might berequired with all the cheerfulness they could muster. In this way, andin this way alone, could they hope to lull the suspicions of the twomen who held them in their power.
It was the only course that promised hope. To attempt to escape wouldbe rash in the extreme, and might have fatal results.
They had about reached this conclusion when Stapleton strolled out.
"My partner and I have been talking," he said, "and we have decided togive you youngsters a chance to share in our fortunes. Of course youwon't get an equal share, but since you have found us out, we mean tomake you work and will reward you well for it. We'll make you wealthyfor the rest of your lives."
"You mean that you want us to help you in your gold hunt?" asked Tom.
"That's it exactly. We can't be far from the gold now. A few more dayswill bring us to it. The more hands the lighter work, so you mayconsider yourselves elected members of the firm."
"It's very kind of you," said Tom gravely. Jack was beyond speech.
"That's all right, we like you. If you will be useful to us, we'llmake you rich. Rufus might have had the same chance, but he doesn'tappear to want to take it. He just keeps on cooking and keeping thingsto rights in the cave."
Tom was weighing every word carefully before he answered.
"I suppose Rufus is just lazy and doesn't like to work," he hazarded.
"Oh, no; it isn't that. He's energetic enough when he wants to be. Butit's something quite different."
"Indeed?"
"Yes; sometimes we think he's a little cracked. What do you suppose hesays?"
"I've no idea."
"Why, that we have made a mistake, and that this isn't Dead Man's Mineat all, and that there is no such place."
Tom nudged Jack and broke into a laugh as if it was the funniest thinghe had ever heard. Jack gave a ghastly echo of his companion'scleverly assumed mirth.
"What can have given him such an idea as that?" asked Tom.
"Well, we've shown him the chart once or twice, but he's so thick hecan't make head or tail of it. Why, the poor, benighted idiot asked usonce if this was the place where was that dead tree that shows on thechart."
"And what did you say?"
"Just what I told you. The tree had either blown down, rotted away orbeen struck by lightning."
The earnestness with which the unfortunate victim of an hallucinationsought to explain away everything was pitiable.
"That stopped his objections, I suppose," said Tom.
"Oh, yes. He said nothing more. Seth said that if he heard any morerubbish from him, he'd shut him up effectually and we have heard nomore from him on the subject. That's the reason we think that Rufus isa little off. He gets such queer ideas in his head."
"Oh, well, we are all liable to get our ideas mixed up a bitsometimes," was Tom's diplomatic reply.
But as Stapleton turned back into the case, his heart sank. The manwas even crazier than he had thought. He actually thought that bydetaining the boys he was doing them a good turn.
Through the gloom that obsessed his spirits, only one ray of lightshone and
that was this:
From what Stapleton had said the boy had deduced one clear fact. Rufusthe negro was, apparently, the only one of the trio in the fullpossession of his senses. In an emergency they would have to trust tothe black man to help them.
Would he do it?
It was a question upon which much depended at the crisis the boys'affairs had reached.