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Updated: May 8, 2025
I am sure that that is the same canyon that Stackpole searched for the Cave of Gold when I was with him," and Dickson turned an excited face to Mr. Conroyal. "It's about a five days' tramp from here." "That's what the dying miner said," broke in Bud eagerly. "And do you think you can find that canyon again?" asked Mr. Conroyal anxiously.
Conroyal. The camp was now placed under the strictest discipline. Ten of the prisoners were compelled to assist in getting the gold from the cave. The others were kept bound and under constant guard, night and day, all except Pedro, who, during the day, was forced to do the cooking and the camp work for all, while at night he was securely bound and returned to his place with the other prisoners.
There were no disturbances during the night; and the dawn of the next morning found everybody up and awaiting eagerly the moment when there would be sufficient light in the canyon to make the climbing of the Big Tree and the entrance into Crooked Arm Gulch safe. At last Mr. Conroyal declared that the great moment had come.
When Thure, bearing in his arms the dead body of a man, and Bud, with the huge skin of a grizzly bear hanging across the back of his horse behind the saddle, rode into the open court in front of the Conroyal rancho, there was great excitement; and, even before they could dismount, they were surrounded by a crowd of gesticulating, question-shouting women and children and old decrepit men, all wild with curiosity to know what had happened.
At this moment the robbers broke from the rocks and ran swiftly out into the open toward the Big Tree. "Ready, everybody ready!" whispered Mr. Conroyal. On came the robbers, until they were within seventy-five feet of the rocks behind which our friends were hiding. "Now!" yelled Mr. Conroyal, and leaped to his feet, and leveled his rifle. "Hands UP!" he commanded.
'Twould be worth goin' a hundred miles out of th' way tew shake them skunks." "All right," and Mr. Conroyal turned to Dickson. "You are the guide from now on, Dick, so step to the front and we will follow."
The devastating gold-fever had swept over the Conroyal and the Randolph ranchos; and had left, of all the grown-up males, only Thure and Bud, who, not yet being of age, had been compelled to stay, much against their wills, to care for the women folks and the ranchos, while their fathers and brothers and all the able-bodied help had rushed off, like madmen, to the mines; and only their loyalty to their loved mothers and fathers had kept them from following.
What do you think we had better do, Ham?" and he turned to Hammer Jones. "First off," answered Ham, "we'd better make a raid on their camp an' git all their hosses an' supplies. Maybe that'll answer th' food question; for, I reckon, they must have come well supplied, seein' that Ugger an' Quinley would have plenty of gold-dust tew buy with." "Good," promptly declared Mr. Conroyal.
Conroyal now told the story of the skin map and the Cave of Gold; and how they had every reason to believe that the men who had robbed them were the same men who had murdered the miner, and who now were striving so desperately to secure the skin map; and in proof that the robbers and the murderers were the same, he showed the note and the dagger, which they had found on the table, in evidence that the men had been there that afternoon.
"I counted twenty of them and I think there are one or two more. Say, but won't we give them a big surprise?" "You bet!" and Bud's jaws came together grimly. "Keep down! Everybody keep down!" warned Mr. Conroyal in a whisper.
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