dead men!"

It was broad daylight; long past the hour when the prospectors should
have ridden on ahead to locate the fields. Their horses, ready saddled,
stood before their tent; and from it came the sound of stertorous
snoring.

Dick walked over and shook the men; and at last they stumbled shakily
to their feet, and made their way to the experts' tent, muttering
something about instructions; but really, as Dick realized, to get the
wherewithal to salt the remaining claims.

Usually this proceeding was carried out long before daylight and with
no one to watch. Now, however, the whole camp was astir; the old
professor was washing in front of his tent in the tiny modicum of water
allowed him for the purpose, boys were hurrying here and there
preparing breakfast; and Dick smiled grimly as he noticed that as Junes
and Grosman entered the experts' tent they carefully closed the fly
behind them.

He looked across at the professor, who had paused in his ablutions to
look in the direction of the tent, and now stood, a comical enough
looking object, his face covered in soap-suds, watching for the
reappearance of the prospectors.

Dick and he exchanged a glance of intelligence, and Dick took a step
towards the old man, intending to whisper to him the news of what he
had found the day before; but before he could do so there came a shout
from the tent, followed by a volley of oaths and ejaculations, the
sound of a scuffle, and out into the open burst the two prospectors,
locked together in a desperate struggle.

"Hound, schwein-hund, robber!" gasped Grosman, as, with his face purple
with rage and exertion he temporarily got the better of his long and
wiry opponent, and bore him back; "scoundrel that you are you could not
play straight even with me! Where are the diamonds hound where have you
hidden them?"

"Yes, where are they? Own up, you thief!" chorused the two experts,
who, pallid and debauched looking, now stood beside the two struggling
men: and Dick now noticed that Gilderman held the small strong box and
that it was open, and empty. The diamonds had gone!

CHAPTER IV

The whole camp had now clustered round the fallen men, the professor
grotesque in his thickly lathered face, Dick intensely interested and
enjoying this fall-out among thieves, the experts and financial men
voluble and uneasy.

And still Grosman knelt upon his slighter opponent, and still he gasped
curses and questions; keeping so tight