JOHN BALL AND THE MYSTERY OF THE GOLD

Mukoki, hearing Rod’s cry, hurried to the pool, but before he reached the spot where the white youth was standing with the yellow nugget in his hand Wabigoon had again plunged beneath the surface.  For several minutes he remained in the water, and when he once more crawled out upon the rocks there was something so strange in his face and eyes that for a moment Rod believed he had found the dead body of the madman.

“He isn’t—­in—­the—­pool!” he panted.  Mukoki shrugged his shoulders and shivered.

“Dead!” he grunted

“He isn’t in the pool!”

Wabigoon’s black eyes gleamed in uncanny emphasis of his words.

“He isn’t in the pool!”

The others understood what he meant.  Mukoki’s eyes wandered to where the water of the pool gushed between the rocks into the broader channel of the chasm stream.  It was not more than knee deep!

“He no go out there!”

“No!”

“Then—­where?”

He shrugged his shoulders suggestively again, and pointed into the pool.

“Body slip under rock.  He there!”

“Try it!” said Wabigoon tersely.

He hurried to the fire, and Rod went with him to gather more fuel while the young Indian warmed his chilled body.  They heard the old pathfinder leap into the water under the fall as they ran.

Ten minutes later Mukoki joined them.

“Gone!  Bad-dog man no there!”

He stretched out one of his dripping arms.

“Gol’ bullet!” he grunted.

In the palm of his hand lay another yellow nugget, as large as a hazelnut!

“I told you,” said Wabi softly, “that John Ball was coming back to his gold.  And he has done so!  The treasure is in the pool!”

But where was John Ball?

Dead or alive, where could he have disappeared?

Under other conditions the chasm would have rung with the wild rejoicing of the gold seekers.  But there was something now that stilled the enthusiasm in them.  At last the ancient map had given up its secret, and riches were within their grasp.  But no one of the three shouted out his triumph.  Somehow it seemed that John Ball had died for them, and the thought clutched at their hearts that if they had not cut down the stub he would still be alive.  Indirectly they had brought about the death of the poor creature who for nearly half a century had lived alone with the beasts in these solitudes.  And that one glimpse of the old man on the rock, the prayerful entreaty in his wailing voice, the despair which he sobbed forth when he found his tree gone, had livened in them something that was more than sympathy.  At this moment the three adventurers would willingly have given up all hopes of gold could sacrifice have brought back that sad, lonely old man who had looked down upon them from the wall of the upper chasm.

“I am sorry we cut down the stub,” said Rod.