The Boy Inventors' Radio Telephone Part 7

"Got it right here," said Jack, producing the bottle which the professor had given back to him.

"Glory be!" exclaimed Zeb c.u.mmings, as he took the lead-wrapped vial as though it was something precious. "I was afeard that if anyone found it they might hev thrown it away, bein' as it don't look as if it amounted ter anything much."

"Is it valuable?" asked Jack, who could not restrain his curiosity.

"That's jes' what I don't rightly know," rejoined Zeb. "I reckon I'd better tell yer how I come ter git it an' then you kin judge fer yourselves."

"We'd like to hear," said Jack, who had felt all along that there was some mystery about the yellow-bearded giant.

"All right! Sit down and I'll tell yer ther yarn. But say, who is yer friend? No offense meant, ye understand."

"This is Professor Jerushah Jenks," said Jack.

"What, the guy that knows all about rocks and such like?" burst out the miner.

"I believe I have achieved some small fame in that line," said the professor.

"Wa'al if this don't beat pay dirt I'm a Piute," exclaimed the miner. "Give us your hand, Professor. I was on my way ter see you when that thar buzz wagon busted me higher nor a turkey buzzard."

"On your way to see me?" echoed the professor in amazed tones.

"Yes, siree bob, that very identical thing," was the bronzed miner's reply.

"But I don't quite understand. You see I----"

"That's all right, Professor. We'll git down ter pay dirt direc'ly," said the miner. "You know of the Scientific Society in Bosting, of course?"

"I am a member of that body, sir," was the dignified reply of the little man.

"Well, they giv' me your name. Said you was the biggest bug on rocks, minerals and sich in the country and so I sets out to pay a call on you."

"But you were many miles from where I live," said the professor. "The railroad, or the trolley----"

"Don't carry folks for nothing," interrupted Zeb, "and nothing's my capital right now."

"You mean that you were walking from Boston?" asked the professor.

"That's right," was the reply. "Landed there on ship from round the Horn last week. Got paid off but some sneak thief in the boarding house I was stopping at got my roll. So I had to hoof it."

"But what did you want with me?" asked the professor.

"I wanted you ter tell me ef that thar stuff in the gla.s.s tube is worth anything or nothing," was the reply.

"Why, do you know where there is more of it?" asked the professor, and the boys could see that he was oddly excited, although preserving an appearance of outward calm.

"Yes, siree," was the emphatic reply. "I know whar thar's enough of it to load a freight train."

"Shades of Huxley!" gasped the professor, actually turning pale. "Do you mean that?"

"I sure do, Professor. It's all down on a map what Blue Nose Sanchez give me afore he pa.s.sed in his checks."

CHAPTER XV.

A TALE OF THE COLORADO.

"Do you fully realize what you are telling me?" asked the professor. The doctor and the nurse had left the room, and the miner, the scientist and the boys were alone.

"Course I do," was the rejoinder of the yellow-bearded giant with the bandaged head. "There ought ter be a fortune in it 'cording to what Blue Nose Sanchez said. Was he lyin', Professor?"

"I don't think so. But tell us your story," urged the man of science.

"Well, it begins some months ago. I was prospecting down along the Colorado River. It was in a mighty bad place. Don't rightly know just how I ever got thar, but thar I was. Wonder was I wasn't killed ten times over 'fore I got to whar I was. But I guess I'm pretty tough.

"That Colorado River is a pretty tough place down where I was. Nothing but desert all around, and just a swift dashing current at the bottom of a canyon that looks like it went into the middle of the earth with steep, dark walls that seem to go straight plum up to the sky.

"But I was lured on by the thought of making a big strike. At last I got down to a place where the banks was so high and steep that it was like twilight even at noon. Grub was gittin' to be a question with me, and I'd about made up my mind to turn back, but I thought I'd make one more last try.

"I set to work on a rocky bank with my pick but nary a color--that's what we call a trace of gold--could I uncover.

"Wa'al, says I to myself, it's up stakes fer you, Zeb, unless you want to starve afore you git back to civilization. But as it was evenin' then I decided to stay whar I was that night and strike back early the next day.

"Here's whar Blue Nose Sanchez comes inter ther story. They called him 'blue nose,' I guess, because of a premature blast that had blown powder into his nose and turned it that color. Anyway, he was a mighty homely specimen.

"It was just gittin' light in the canyon, although it must have been broad day up above, when I hears an almighty hollering up the gulch. The next thing I knows, round a bend comes a small boat. There's two men in it. They must have been crazy to try to make the pa.s.sage, for the river is just a ma.s.s of rapids and whirlpools, and I never heard of anyone trying to shoot 'em.

"But thar was these two fellows in this boat, and they was scared, too, I kin tell you. Wa'al, I stood thar like a stuffed pig on the bank watching 'em as they came toward me at the speed of an express train. Suddenly one of 'em, the chap that was trying to steer, twisted the oar he was guiding the boat with and it cracked under his weight. He went overboard in a flash.

"The next moment, with a yell of fright that I kin hear yit, the boat was hurried past me on that water that boiled like yeast in a kittle, and in a flash it had disappeared round another bend. What became of it I never knew, but it must have been upset and the man in it drowned. No boat could have lasted long in that water, even with an oar to steer it, and that was gone.

"I waded out inter ther water as far as I dared and by some freak of the current the man who had toppled out of the boat came within my reach. I grabbed him and dragged him ash.o.r.e, more dead than alive. I done what I could for him and he came to after a while. That was how I met Blue Nose Sanchez.

"Well, sir, Blue Nose was a mighty sick man, even then. He had fever and was a ravin' lunatic at times, but at intervals he made out to tell me suthin' of his story. Him and his partner, a fellow he called Foxy Joe, was on their way to find a little island down ther river where no white man but only one had been. This man was a friend of Foxy Joe's and the two met up in Yuma. Foxy's friend had a lot to tell him about a wonderful island some Injuns had told him about whar there was some sort of mysterious mineral. By what Joe could make out this mineral was nuthin' more nor less than radium."

"Radium!" exclaimed the boys.

"That's right," went on the miner. "Foxy's friend allowed that there was cartloads of it lyin' loose thar 'cording to the description the Injuns give him, and he showed Foxy a sample of the stuff. That sample is in this little lead-wrapped bottle. It's wrapped in lead 'cos otherwise it 'ud make sores on you when you carry it about. It's workin', workin' all the time, frum what I kin make out.

"Well, 'cordin' ter ther way Blue Nose Sanchez tells it, Foxy and the man who knew about the island and had a rough plan of it the Injuns drew fer him, had a fight, and Foxy kills him, or thinks he has. Blue Nose sees it and sees Foxy take the map and the little lead-wrapped bottle off the body. He suspects somethin' and tells Foxy that he'll give him up to the law if he don't let him in on it. So Foxy tells him all about it and him and Sanchez, who was then a mule rustler, agrees ter go partners and go git ther radium, or whatever it is.

"They builds this boat, the one that disappeared, and in order that Foxy shouldn't play no tricks, that bein' his disposition, Sanchez 'lows he'll take both the sample and the map. Foxy sees no way out of it but to give in and that's the way it's fixed.

"The boat is taken out of Yuma in sections and then put together in a place whar n.o.body ain't likely to come nosin' around. Then they starts out on what I guess was the most darn-fool enterprise any two locoed fortune-hunters ever undertook. How it ended you know. They both got fever, but Sanchez was the worst. He died that same evening, his tumble in the water havin' made him worse. I buried him there as best I could and then, as he had wished, I takes the sample and the map.

"'Some day,' he told me, just afore he closed his eyes for good, 'you'll be glad you saved me, even though it was too late.'

"Well, I beat it back and get out of the canyon more dead than alive and finally make a small strike. I go to San Francisco with it and try to git ther stuff a.n.a.lyzed, but everyone I tole about it laughed at me and said I was crazy. So, thinks I, I'll come East. My money was about all gone, so I shipped afore ther mast on a Cape Horn ship, and got here.

"Now, you have me tale, old top," grinned the good-natured miner, and added: "Well, has my toe-and-heeling been worth its salt?"

The professor nodded solemnly.

"What is it?" cried Jack, his heart beating with a strange, wild hope.

Tom and Zeb echoed Jack's eager question.

"My friends," declared the little man of science pompously, "we have reason to believe that a wonderful discovery has been made, namely, Z.2.X."

CHAPTER XVI.

ZEB c.u.mMINGS.

"Z.2.X., the most radio-active stuff in the world!" exclaimed Jack.

"I suppose that approximately describes it," said the professor, "but what do you know about it?"

Jack explained how ardently his father had wished for the missing element to make his system of radio telephony the most efficient in use.

"Well, if what Sanchez said was true, and the map is right, there is plenty of it right on that island," said the miner.

"Yes, that may all be," objected the professor, "but how are you going to get at it?"

"Wa'al that's a poser. You can't reach it in a boat and you can't reach it over the desert," said Zeb. "The country all round there is dry as an oven and, anyhow, if you got to ther banks of ther Colorado right by ther island ther's no way of gitting down to ther island. Sanchez says that the Injuns told Foxy's friend that a long time ago, when first they found the stuff on the island, there was a way of getting down to it. But an earthquake sunk the river bed and n.o.body had been thar since the Injuns that found it. He said that they first come to take notice of it by reason of the way it shined at night. But only a few of the tribe would go near on account of their thinking the place was haunted."

"Have you got that map?" asked the professor.

"Yes, if you'll reach my coat I'll show it you," said the miner.

Jack gave him the ragged garment off a hook at the back of the door. Zeb fumbled in the pockets for a minute and then brought out a knife.

"A rip more or less won't make no difference," he said, and cut a slash down the lining. There, carefully stowed inside, where it could not be suspected, was a folded, time-yellowed paper.

The miner opened it slowly and spread it out on the counterpane. The boys, not without a sense of shock, noted a dark, rusty-looking stain upon it. It struck them that the marks might be the life blood of the treacherous Foxy's friend who had met a tragic end in Yuma.

Zeb, with a broad and blackened forefinger, traced the course of the Colorado. At length his finger paused at an island marked in red. There was some fantastic Indian lettering, or sign-drawing, about it, and underneath, in a white man's handwriting, were the words: "Rattlesnake Island."

"I reckon Foxy Joe's friend must hev written that in," commented Zeb.

"It looks that way," said the professor, who had poured the sample of mineral-bearing sand back into the vial and restored it to Zeb c.u.mmings.

"Rattlesnake Island," repeated Jack. "Are there any rattlers down that way?"

"Yes, and gila monsters and tarantulas and centipedes," replied Zeb cheerfully. "But you soon get used to 'em."

Some other islands were marked on the map, but Rattlesnake Island was the only one designated by name.

"That must be the place whar all that stuff is, then," decided Zeb. "I wish thar was some way of gittin' thar."

"If there is even only a small fraction of the mineral-bearing sand there," said the professor, "there's a fortune in it."

"Wa'al if you can't git it out what good is it?" said Zeb philosophically. "Anyhow, I'm glad that Sanchez spoke the truth with his dying words. Maybe thar is some way, except by water, in spite of what he said."

"Maybe there is," said Jack. "It seems a shame to think of all that rich stuff lying there neglected and un.o.btainable."

"It does indeed," agreed the professor. "In that sample I find traces of metals from which filaments for electric lights could be made and substances invaluable in medicine for X-ray purposes as well as the Z.2.X. which your father is convinced would make the radio telephone as practical as the wireless telegraph."

They would like to have stayed there all the morning poring over the map and asking further questions of the rugged miner, but at that moment the nurse came in and declared that the injured man must have quiet.

And so there, for the present, the matter rested. The professor departed for his home greatly excited over the events of the morning, but his excitement was a little allayed by the fear that he would be late for his mid-day meal with dire results from Miss Melissa.

As for the boys, they could talk of nothing else. The idea of that lonely island, lying at the bottom of an unscalable canyon in the midst of a burning, desolate desert, appealed powerfully to their imaginations. Their minds were in a whirl over the strange coincidence that had brought them in contact with a man who knew where possibly inexhaustible supplies of the mysterious Z.2.X. lay ready for the taking, provided it could be reached.

"I'd give a whole lot to be able to fix up an expedition to go out there and get that stuff," said Jack with a sigh.

"So would I," agreed Tom. "But I guess, as Zeb c.u.mmings said, it will be a long time before anyone sets foot on Rattlesnake Island."

CHAPTER XVII.

IN THE LABORATORY.

That afternoon Jack broached to his father the events of the morning. Mr. Chadwick's enthusiasm may be imagined as his son told him of the professor's hasty a.n.a.lysis of the contents of Zeb c.u.mming's gla.s.s vial.

But there remained the insuperable obstacle of the remoteness of the island where the deposits lay, and the difficulties--in fact, almost the impossibilities--that barred the way. For the time being, however, the matter was set aside while further experiments with the radio telephone were conducted. As a means of increased transmitting power, Mr. Chadwick had in mind a series of sending devices attached to one mouthpiece. In this way he believed he could at least partially overcome the resistance of the atmosphere, and get a higher percentage of current.

He had been working on the idea all the morning and was anxious for a test. The Wondership was, therefore, wheeled out, and before long the boys were in the air once more. As before, they sailed in the direction of Rayburn. As they pa.s.sed above the farm where they had met with their adventure the day before, they turned to each other with a laugh.