In a few minutes Frank Hardy saw the gleam of the light and heard his brother’s footsteps as Joe returned. He was carrying the shovel that had served them to such good purpose in uncovering the secret door to the passageway of the blue room.

“I’ll dig,” he volunteered, handing the flashlight to Frank.

Then, with a will, he set to work.

The earth was soft, which showed that it had been dug up before and replaced. Frank held the light, directing its beam on the place where Joe was digging, and as a hole rapidly appeared in the ground he watched eagerly for some sign of the treasure which they sought.

In his mind was always the hated probability that they might have been forestalled and that the outlaws might have already visited the place and removed the gold. But, in that case, he argued to himself, it was not likely that they would have taken such precautions to bank up the locked door of the passage. There would have been no need for it.

“Nothing yet,” panted Joe.

“It may be buried deep.”

A far-off sound caught Frank’s ear. He started violently, because his nerves were already tautened by suspense.

“Did you hear that?” he asked.

Joe rested on the shovel.

“I heard something,” he said doubtfully.

They listened, but the sound was not repeated.

“It might have been a fall of rock,” said Frank. “It sounded like rocks striking against the walls of the shaft.”

“It’s just like my thinking I heard voices a while ago. This place is so silent and creepy it gets your nerves all unstrung.”

“Maybe.”

Joe resumed his shoveling.

Another shovelful of earth and he bent forward.

“Something here!” he exclaimed. “My shovel struck something solid.”

Frank brought the flashlight closer. Just above the earth he could see the top of a canvas sack.

“It’s the gold! Dig, Joe. Dig!”

Joe Hardy needed no urging. He had seized the shovel again and the earth was flying furiously on all sides. Rapidly, he uncovered the top of the canvas sack, and then a second appeared in view. Frank bent down and seized one of the sacks, dragging it from the retaining earth. It came free. Joe flung aside his shovel and, in the illumination from the flashlight, Frank undid the heavy cord at the top of the sack and opened it.

He thrust his hand inside and withdrew it a moment later, clutching a handful of reddish brown objects that looked like pebbles.

“Nuggets!”

The boys gazed at the gold nuggets in silent delight. They were of good size, and the youths realized that they must be very valuable. Frank thrust his hand into the sack again and this time brought forth a handful of reddish sand that they recognized as gold dust.

“Gold dust and nuggets! We’ve found it at last!”

“There are more sacks yet. Didn’t dad say there were four?”

Joe picked up his shovel again. After a few minutes’ energetic digging he uncovered the rest of the sacks and in a short time all four were on the floor of the cave.

The Hardy boys examined each in turn, and found that each was identical with the first in that it contained gold dust and nuggets in large quantities. The sight of so much gold sent a thrill through them, just as it has sent a thrill through gold-seekers since the world began. Here was wealth, wealth in the raw, wealth for which men had fought and struggled, wealth that had been drawn from the depths of the earth.

“We’ve found it at last!” Frank declared, with a sigh of relief.

“Dad will be pleased.”

“I don’t think he ever really expected we’d find it.”

“We’ve worked hard enough for it. Won’t the outlaws be wild when they come here for it and find that it’s gone!”

“Let them be wild. It isn’t theirs.”

“Four sacks of it,” said Joe. “It must be worth thousands.”

“It’s the gold that Jadbury Wilson mentioned. I’m sure of that. And before we hand it over to Bart Dawson we’ll have an explanation from him.”

“Somehow, I can’t believe he’s dishonest. There must be a mistake in it somewhere, Frank.”

“You can’t always tell by looks in this world. Although, to tell the truth, I find it hard to believe that Dawson made away with this, myself. But we’ll make him come across with the whole story, and if he did steal it, we’ll see that Wilson gets his share.”

“That’s the ticket. And now⁠—to get out of this mine with it.”

“It’ll be easy enough. We can go up the shaft. That’s the way the outlaws got in here, I guess. We took the wrong entrance getting in here. We got into one of the side workings of the mine instead of coming down the main way.”

“As long as we don’t run into any more wolves I don’t care how we get out,” said Joe. “The sooner we get out though, the better. It must be night by now.”

Frank bent and picked up two of the sacks of gold.

“I’ll carry two and you carry two. Boy, but they’re heavy! I never knew gold weighed so much.”

“I shouldn’t care if it weighed a ton. It won’t seem like much, now that we’ve found it at last.”

Frank hesitated.

“It might be as well to dig a little deeper there. They might have divided the gold up. I’d hate to overlook a sack of it.”

“I was just thinking the same thing.” Joe picked up the shovel again. “I’ll dig down a little bit farther, just for luck.”

He attacked the hole in the earth again, and for a while he shoveled industriously, but it soon became apparent that they had found all of the gold that had been buried in that place.

“I guess we got it all,” he said, flinging the shovel to one side. “All the outlaws will find here will be a hole in the ground⁠—a big one.”

“I’d like to be listening in when they come to look for their treasure. They’ll be as mad as hornets.”

Joe picked up his two sacks of gold.

“Better let me carry one of yours,” he suggested. “You have the flashlight to carry. It’ll be awkward for you.”

“I’d forgotten about the light,” Frank agreed. “All right.”

He passed over one of the sacks he had been carrying, and then bent down to pick up the flashlight that had been resting on the ground.

“And now,” he said, “we’ll leave the blue room. It isn’t as blue as Black Pepper and his gang will be when they come to visit the place.”

The boys looked at the hole in the ground and chuckled. They were just about to turn, ready to leave, when they heard a sound from the passage leading into the chamber.

This time they knew it was no trick of the imagination. They could sense plainly that someone was standing there. Someone had crept up through the tunnel, unheard, and was even then standing silently in the darkness.

Frank flung the flashlight about. Its circle of radiance illuminated the dark entrance to the chamber clearly. There, in the very center of the opening, stood a tall, swarthy man with villainous features. He had a heavy black beard and his dark eyebrows were knitted with wrath. And, leveled directly at the two boys, he held in each hand a wicked-looking black revolver.

“Hands up!” he rasped curtly, in a voice that vibrated with anger.

The Hardy boys knew without question that this man was none other than the notorious outlaw they had tried to circumvent⁠—Black Pepper!