“Yes.  But now, of course, we can’t tell where to dig for it.”

The Indian turned to his wife and talked rapidly with her in their own dialect.  She, too, seemed greatly excited, making quick gestures.  Finally she ran out of the hut.

“Where is she going?” asked Tom suspiciously.

“To get her grandfather.  He very old Indian.  He know story of buried cities under trees.  Very old story—­what you call legend, maybe.  But Goosal know.  He tell same as his grandfather told him.  You wait.  Goosal come, and you listen.”

“Good, Ned!” suddenly cried Tom.  “Maybe, we’ll get on the track of lost Kurzon after all, through some ancient Indian legend.  Maybe we won’t need the map!”

“It hardly seems possible,” said Ned slowly.  “What can these Indians know of buried cities that were out of existence before Columbus came here?  Why, they haven’t any written history.”

“No, and that may be just the reason they are more likely to be right,” returned Tom.  “Legends handed down from one grandfather to another go back a good many hundred years.  If they were written they might be destroyed as the professor’s map was.  Somehow or other, though I can’t tell why, I begin to see daylight ahead of us.”

“I wish I did,” remarked Ned.

“Here comes Goosal I think,” murmured Tom, and he pointed to an Indian, bent with the weight of years, who, led by Tal’s wife, was slowly approaching the hut.

CHAPTER XXI

THE CAVERN

“Now Goosal can tell you,” said Tal, evidently pleased that he had, in a measure, solved the problem caused by the burning of the professor’s map.  “Goosal very old Indian.  He know old stories—­legends—­very old.”

“Well, if he can tell us how to find the buried city of Kurzon and the—­the things in it,” said Tom, “he’s all right!”

The aged Indian proceeded slowly toward the hut where the impatient youths awaited him.

“I know what you seek in the buried city,” remarked Tal.

“Do you?” cried Tom, wondering if some one had indiscreetly spoken of the idol of gold.

“Yes you want pieces of rock, with strange writings on them, old weapons, broken pots.  I know.  I have helped white men before.”

“Yes, those are the things we want,” agreed Tom, with a glance at his chum.  “That is—­some of them.  But does your wife’s grandfather talk our language?”

“No, but I can tell you what he says.”

By this time the old man, led by “Mrs. Tal”—­ as the young men called the wife of the Indian they had helped—­entered the hut.  He seemed nervous and shy, and glanced from Tom and Ned to his grandson-in-law, as the latter talked rapidly in the Indian dialect.  Then Goosal made answer, but what it was all about the boys could not tell.

“Goosal say,” translated Tal, “that he know a story of a very old city away down under ground.”