lever, anyway; no gettin' around that. What does he do to
get on the right track? He goes an' hunts up the Indian--the one as told
us to look for heap rock."

"Bright idea. Of course Indian wouldn't tell Matt anything but truth--he
wouldn't."

"No, because Matt gave him two dollars. So Indian told him there was a
cave and he wasn't sure about the treasure because he's superstitious
and he's too much afraid of the dead men to look. But the cave isn't
anywhere near Buffalo Creek. It's on down below."

"You mean below camp?"

"Yes, down in the woods somewhere around Vinegar Creek. You know Buffalo
Creek gets pretty rapid after it passes the Ice Box. Runs down with lots
of force into Vinegar Creek. It's quite a gully down there and for five
dollars more the Indian's willing to show Matt the exact place."

"Worth that much to Matty?"

"Worth it! You ain't talkin' sense. Matt doesn't need money so awful
bad, but there's just two things he'd like better than anything else in
the world. One is to find the treasure and so kill that everlastin' joke
about the bread box. T'other's to catch the bank robbers an' so show
that he's the smartest boy in camp."

"That five dollars won't get him to it--it won't."

"Well, Matt's lucky this time, as it happens. He isn't going to have to
pay the Indian the five. He's found a better way. Last night he went
down to kinder look things over an' he found a couple o' men camping.
First off he hoped they were the robbers but they're pretty nice men and
they're engineers. Matt wouldn't have told them anything but when he
found they were surveyin' Vinegar Creek and goin' on up to Buffalo next
he could see right off that they had good chances of runnin' right into
the cave, so he gets ahead of 'em by tellin' all about it and making 'em
promise equal shares if they found anything."

"Clever Matty!" exclaimed Chick-chick.

"Yes, he's clever, Matty is. No good paying any five dollars to any
Indian when he's got as good a thing as that. These engineers want to
see our camp so Matty's to bring 'em up this afternoon while everybody's
at the swim. He doesn't want the crowd around to be pestering 'em with
questions."

When this information was carried to Jolly Bill he was more disturbed
than he cared to acknowledge. He had a very well defined feeling that
his scheme to restore Buffalo Lake had become common property and that
these engineers were competitors. He felt some safety in the fact that