Free The Alaskan Adventure by Franklin W. Dixon

pockets stuffed with money. Hundreds of them, thousands of them. And they’ll all come out here to tour my mine. It’ll be the biggest attraction around—the Gold Rush days live again. In a year or two I’ll make enough to retire to Florida.”
    Lucky reached deep into his pants pocket and brought out a clenched fist. Stretching it out toward Joe and Frank, he said, “See this?”
    They looked down at his rough, dirty hand. “What?” Frank asked.
    Lucky opened his hand. A gold nugget the size of a bean gleamed in the weak sunlight.
    â€œWow!” Joe exclaimed.
    Lucky smiled, revealing the stub of a front tooth.
    â€œYou found that here?” Frank asked.
    â€œSure I did,” Lucky replied. He turned and walked quickly toward the frozen creek, talking a mile a minute as he went. Frank and Joe had to hurry to stay up with him.
    â€œI found this one thirty years ago,” he said, holding up the fist with the gold nugget. “Found it in the creek. This creek’s evil and cunning, but I’m smarter than it is. For thousands of years now, it’s been washing gold out of the hillsides and carrying it down by here. It means to dump it inthe Yukon, so it’s lost forever. But as soon as it gets this far, I take it and I keep it!”
    â€œDo you pan for it?” Frank asked him.
    Joe remembered seeing pictures of gold miners, squatting beside streams with large, shallow pans in their hands. They’d fill the pans with gravel and creek water, then slowly swirl the sand and water out. Gold was heavier than rock, so it would sink to the bottom of the pan.
    â€œPanning? Panning’s for fools,” Lucky said scornfully. “I run a placer mine.”
    He pointed toward a long wooden trough that ran from farther up the creek to just next to his shack. “See that? Come summer, I dig up the gravel from the streambed and put it in there. The water washes it down the chute, and the gold drops into the box because it’s so heavy. Then I go and collect the dust and specks and nuggets, and stash them away.”
    â€œDo you find a lot of gold that way?” Joe asked.
    â€œI’m not saying,” Lucky replied, giving them a shrewd look. “But I’ll tell you one thing. You want gold these days, you don’t go looking for it in the hills. You got to work too hard for it that way. The real gold is in tourists’ pockets.”
    Frank laughed. “You sound like you ought to be on the payroll of the ThemeLife Company,” he said.
    â€œThey haven’t asked me,” Lucky replied.
    Joe broke in to say, “Haven’t they? We heard that you were working for Curt Stone. Somebody saw him giving you a lot of money.”
    Lucky spun around to face him, his fists clenched. “Who said that?” he demanded.
    â€œJake Ferguson,” Joe told him.
    â€œJake lies like a dog!” Lucky shouted, swinging his arms around like a windmill. “There’s bad blood between us, and it’s all his doing. From the day he figured out that I’m not going to let him cheat me the way he does everyone else, he’s been after me. As for Curt Stone, he never gave me anything but the time of day, and that’s flat.”
    Frank opened his mouth to ask another question, but Lucky went on, “Get off my claim, both of you, and don’t let me see you around here again. I was right to start with. You’re a couple of spies, that’s what you are!”
    Joe looked over at Frank and motioned with his head. They weren’t going to get any more information out of Lucky. They turned and started back down the trail to town.
    Once they were out of Lucky’s hearing, Frank said, “Well, somebody’s lying. But who? Lucky? Why would he want to keep us from finding out that he’s working for Curt—unless he’s doing more than just talking to people?”
    Joe was about to reply when he heard a sound