rful portable electric torches had been brought by the
exploring party and these were turned, now, on different parts of the
rocky walls and roof of the cave. Bud showed where he had been held a
prisoner, and it did not take long to find places where digging had
been going on.

As the lights flashed over the rough, rocky walls, there were reflected
back glistening yellow slivers of illumination.

"Look!" cried Dick, pointing. "There it is! Gold!"

"Gold! Gold!" came in joyful shouts from the exulting cowboys. "We've
found a gold mine!"

And truly it seemed so.

CHAPTER XXI

FALSE SECURITY

Only those, probably very few of you, who have ever taken part in a
gold rush can understand and appreciate the wild excitement that
prevailed when the flashing lights revealed the rock of the cave to be
seamed and studded with yellow veins and patches. It aroused even the
most lethargic of the cowboys. And, truth to tell, none of them were
very strongly of that type. They were accustomed to live amid
excitement of one kind or another, and this was but a new sort.

"Gold! Gold!" was the exulting murmur on all sides.

"There's enough here to make us all rich!" cried Yellin' Kid, his loud
voice echoing through the cavern.

"No more ridin' fence for me!" cried Snake.

"Me, I'm going to have one of them pianos that plays itself!" declared
Billee, whose soul, hitherto, had been obliged to get its feast of
music from a mouth organ.

"And look where them hombres have been takin' out our gold!" exclaimed
Yellin' Kid as he flashed his light on a wall where, unmistakably,
excavating had been going on. There were signs of new digging in the
rock and dirt of the cave's sides and the ground beneath showed a
litter of debris.

"You ought to make 'em pay for all they took out!" declared Snake to
Bud.

"Maybe it would be a good idea to catch 'em first," suggested Dick,
quietly.

"Well, that's so. We'll do that after we have begun to dig out the
gold," decided the cowboy. "Oh, boy! Look at the yaller stuff!" and
he picked up what seemed to be a nugget of great value. It was of
gleaming yellow and heavy in his hand.

The boy ranchers were no whit less excited than their older companions.
But perhaps the finding of the gold mine, in which, knowing Mr.
Merkel's generosity, the cowboys believed they all would share, meant
more to the older men than it did to the boys. The latter were, in a
sense, owners of the r