For several seconds Rick and Chot stood there silent—gazing at the astonishing sight which met their eyes. For it was astonishing—to think that they should thus unexpectedly come upon the stolen auto for which so many officers were searching.
Good luck had attended their whim to take a trolley ride and visit the cave. But now all interest in the cave vanished. Their whole attention was centred on the overturned auto, which lay on one side in a tangle of bushes and small trees.
“They tried to make too short a turn and upset,” was Rick’s opinion.
“Yes,” agreed Chot as an examination of the ground, showing where the wheels had skidded in soft sand and mud, bore this idea out.
Then a new thought came to the boys, though Rick was the first to express it.
“Maybe they’re there now,” he said. “Under the car.”
“Dead?” asked Chot in an awed voice.
“Maybe.”
“Let’s look.”
“Better not.”
“Why?”
“The coroner, or somebody like that, always has to be first to look at a dead body. That’s the law.”
It wasn’t, exactly, but it was near enough.
“But maybe some of ’em are there—hurt,” suggested Chot. “If they are we’d better—”
“I’m not going to get shot!” objected his chum. “They’ve got guns, it’s likely.”
“They can’t shoot if they’re hurt,” reasoned Chot. “Come on, let’s look.”
“I wish we had Ruddy here,” voiced Rick.
“It would be better,” agreed his chum. “But I reckon it’s all right; I don’t hear a sound, and if any of ’em was hurt we’d hear groans.”
“Unless they were unconscious,” Rick said.
However they listened and heard not so much as a whisper coming from the overturned car. Then they plucked up courage to go nearer. Still no sound—no motion—nothing.
“The car isn’t broken much, as far as I can see,” said Rick in a low voice.
“That’s good—maybe it’ll run after its turned right side up,” spoke Chot.
They had now approached close enough to make sure that no one—certainly no wounded or injured bank robbers—were in the overturned car. There was a little pool of blood on the ground, however, which seemed to indicate that some one had been hurt. But of the men there was not a trace. And, as far as the boys could see, none of their baggage or Mr. Campbell’s was missing—at least none of the large pieces.
“Maybe they’re hiding in the cave,” suggested Chot.
“Who?”
“The bank robbers.”
“That’s so,” agreed Rick, with an uneasy glance at the dark and brush-choked entrance to the cavern. “If Ruddy was here he could soon tell.”
“But if he went in they might shoot him.”
“That’s right. I’m glad we didn’t bring him. Say, we’d better go back and tell the sheriff about this.”
“Sure we had,” assented the other lad. Pausing only long enough to walk around the car again, and to make sure that most, if not all of their belongings were there, the boys hurried back through the woods, across the fields and to the place where they had alighted from the trolley car. They were lucky enough to see coming the very electric vehicle they had taken out from Fayetville.
“You didn’t stay long at the cave,” remarked the conductor, who was on his return trip.
“No, but we found something,” said Rick, and they told their story.
“You’d better telephone in when we get to Roseland,” suggested the trolley man, naming the nearest village. “Then you can wait and take the sheriff right to the place.”
It seemed sound advice and the boys followed it. The sheriff was astonished and, in a measure, disappointed at the news. Astonished because no one of his officers had thought of looking in the direction of the cave, and disappointed because it was evident that the robbers had escaped. They had probably fled when the car overturned, injuring one of them, if not more.
“Unless maybe they’re in the cave,” suggested Rick over the telephone.
“We’ll soon find that out,” said the sheriff grimly.
The boys waited in the Roseland store from which they had telephoned, the sheriff telling them he would call for them there and take them on to the cave. And Rick and Chot were the centre of a group of wondering and eager men and boys who gathered when news spread of the locating of the car in which the robbers had fled.
In due time Sheriff Hart and some of his constables arrived, and a small cavalcade followed him and his party out to the cave. There were some tense moments as officers, with ready guns, entered the cavern calling on the robbers to surrender. But there was no answer, and no shots and when lights were brought and the cave examined there was no trace of the criminals.
“Probably they didn’t go in there at all,” said the sheriff. “They may have headed for this hiding place, but when they turned too quick, and upset, they just naturally scattered. Well, we’ll get ’em yet!”
Many hands made light work of righting the overturned auto, which, aside from some dents and scratches, was little the worse for what had happened. It was in running order and one of the officers drove it back to Fayetville, much to the delight of Rick and Chot.
When the party of which Mr. Campbell was an unofficial member next telephoned to the court-house, asking for news and reporting that they had none to impart, the finding of the auto was related to them, and they were advised to return and take up the search from the cave; looking for men afoot rather than for a trio of bank robbers in an auto.
“Well, boys, you certainly brought me good luck!” exclaimed Mr. Campbell as he greeted Rick and Chot on his return. “I had about given up my car, and all in it, as gone forever. But there isn’t a thing missing of any account, and though the machine is a bit battered she’ll run all right.”
Some slight repairs were needed and it was decided that the boys and Mr. Campbell would remain over night in Fayetville, going on next day. Meanwhile the search for the robbers was continued by the sheriff and his officers.
It was assumed that the bank looters had intended to hide in the cave with the auto until it was safe to venture out and depart for some other locality. But fate had played against them, as it did to the end, for, eventually, they were caught and sentenced to long terms in prison.
Rick and Chot hoped they might find some of the stolen money in the auto, for they wished the thrill of returning it to the rightful owners, but this was not to be. There was not so much as a stray penny.
“Well, I guess we’re ready to start off once more,” said Mr. Campbell next day when the auto had been put in good order and repacked with their belongings. “Uncle Tod will be wondering what has become of you,” he added.
“Mother wrote and told him we might be delayed on the road,” said Rick. “But I’ll be glad to get to his camp.”
“So’ll I,” added Chot.
“Not but what we’re having a dandy time!” Rick hastened to say, for fear Mr. Campbell might think he was not grateful. “But I want to find out what it is Uncle Tod wants us to do.”
“I don’t blame you,” said Mr. Campbell.
“I don’t believe anything more exciting can happen there than what we’ve already had,” said Chot.
But he was mistaken, as he had to admit later.
The next two days were rather quiet ones. The party, including Ruddy, of course, who was glad to be back with his master and the latter’s chum, journeyed on, up over the mountain passes and soon found themselves in the Great West. I use capitals because that is how it always impresses me and how it impressed Rick and Chot. They had never been there before and it was a wonderful revelation to them.
“Well, I shall hate to lose you boys—you’ve been jolly good traveling companions,” said Mr. Campbell when, one afternoon, they reached the town nearest to where Uncle Tod had said he could be found.
“We’ll miss you, too,” said Rick. “But I guess we’ll find plenty to do.”
“I haven’t any doubt of it,” chuckled Mr. Campbell. “Well, we’d better stop here and inquire how to get to your uncle’s place,” he remarked, as they reached a forked road in a lonely section. “We don’t want to run up against any more broken bridges.”
They saw approaching a man riding a mule—a man who looked to be a typical prospector or miner. Hung about him, fore and aft on the saddle was a collection of implements and camp stuff—a kettle, frying pan, shovel, pick and a roll of what might be a pup tent and bedding.
“Good afternoon, strangers,” greeted the prospector, pleasantly.
Mr. Campbell returned the salutation and asked:
“Do you know where a Mr. Belmont has a camp around here? A Mr. Toddingham Belmont?”
“Toddingham Belmont,” repeated the prospector in puzzled accents.
“Uncle Tod I call him,” said Rick.
“Oh, him—Uncle Tod! Yes, yes! Now I know who you mean! Uncle Tod, oh, yes!” and he laughed. “His camp’s about a mile beyond that lone pine,” he said, pointing up the trail. “He and Sam Rockford are there—if you want to find them,” he added after a significant pause.
“Why shouldn’t we want to find them?” asked Mr. Campbell, struck by a queer expression on the prospector’s face. “We have come a long way to locate them—at least these boys have.”
“Oh, all right. It’s none of my business,” said the other quickly. “Of course if you want to throw in with a couple of—crazy loons—why, that’s your affair—not mine.”
“Crazy loons!” exclaimed Mr. Campbell, “what do you mean?”
“Well you ask anybody around here if a couple of men trying to wait for Lost River to come back, aren’t crazy, and if they don’t say they are, I’ll eat my mule’s ears—that’s what I’ll do!” offered the prospector. “As crazy as loons—that’s what they are! I’ll eat my mule’s ears! I sure will!”
Not knowing exactly how to reply to this sort of talk, and hardly understanding what the man meant by it, Rick and Chot said nothing. Mr. Campbell was silent for a moment, looking at the prospector on his mule as he made off down the mountain trail.
“So you think Uncle Tod is crazy, eh?” finally asked Mr. Campbell.
“I don’t think it—I know it,” came the answer with a chuckle. “And so’s Sam Rockford—he’s crazier than Tod if such a thing can be. Go on, Salamander!” This last was called to the mule which ambled on with many a clatter and clang of the prospector’s outfit.
“Well, boys, does this discourage you?” asked Mr. Campbell, when the old man and his mule were out of sight around a turn in the trail.
“It does not!” cried Rick, cheerfully. “Once upon a time I thought Uncle Tod was crazy, but it turned out all right.”
“And I have no doubt but what it will this time, Rick. We’ll go on to your uncle’s camp. I’m glad we have found it with no further trouble,” said Mr. Campbell.
“I’m afraid we’ve been quite a bother to you, Mr. Campbell,” remarked Rick, as the auto was again sent climbing the mountain trail.
“Oh, not at all,” was the answer. “In fact you have been good company for me. It would have been mighty lonesome coming all this distance alone, and I didn’t have to get much off my trail to come here. It’s been a pleasure.”
“Well, we had fun out of it, anyhow,” said Chot. “But say, what do you s’pose he means, saying your Uncle Tod and that other man are crazy?” asked Chot of Rick.
“I don’t know,” was the reply. “I never heard of this Sam Rockford, though my folks may know him.”
“I suppose he is your uncle’s partner,” suggested Mr. Campbell. “As for this prospector saying other people are crazy—well, I’ve had some experience out here in the west. There is a class of man who, as soon as some one differs from them, at once jump to the idea that the other fellow is as crazy as a loon. Maybe the other man doesn’t do his mining in the same way as do most of the miners—the result is he gets the name of being crazy.
“And from what you tell me of your Uncle Tod, Rick, I’d say he wouldn’t follow in the same old rut if he found a better way to do a job. He’d take a new trail and that might result in his being called crazy.”
“I guess that’s it,” agreed Rick.
“So don’t pay too much attention to what this prospector said,” went on Mr. Campbell with a laugh.
“I should say not!” agreed Chot. “We’re out here for a good time!”
“But I guess Uncle Tod wants us to help him do something,” said Rick, “though I don’t know what it is.”
“We’ll soon find out,” remarked Mr. Campbell.
Following the directions given them by the prospector aboard the mountain-climbing mule Salamander, the three in the auto kept on up the trail, which wound over a fairly good road. They made quite an ascent, and then dipped down into a valley—a pleasant valley which seemed as though it ought to have a stream running through it. But there was no sign of water, save, here and there, small pools, while in other places there were indications of brooks that had dried up, leaving only a bed of stones and gravel.
Emerging from a patch of woods, the road forked sharply and as the prospector had said nothing about this, Mr. Campbell stopped, uncertain which turning to take.
“Well, boys, what is it, left or right?” he asked. There was no sign-post or other travelers’ signal to guide them.
Neither Rick nor Chot could tell as they had never been here before, nor had their companion. It was getting late in the afternoon, and Mr. Campbell was anxious to drive the boys to Uncle Tod’s camp by night, for he was in somewhat of a hurry to get back on his own trail, that would lead him to San Francisco.
“I think that prospector was crazy, if you ask me,” remarked Chot, as they looked undecidedly at the forking road. “Why didn’t he tell us which trail to take?”
“He might have, and not strained his intellect,” chuckled Mr. Campbell.
“Say!” suddenly cried Rick, “isn’t that a flag up there?”
He pointed off toward the hilly side of the valley at the left.
The others strained their eyes and Chot made out something fluttering through the leafy branches of trees.
“It does look like a flag,” he said.
Mr. Campbell had field glasses in the car and, taking an observation through them, he was able to declare:
“It is a flag flying. Some one must be there, and though it may not be your Uncle Tod they perhaps can tell us where to find him. We’ll head for the flag.”
This they did, taking the left trail, and a little later they came to a sort of plateau jutting out from the sloping side of the mountain valley. On this plateau, or shelf, which was several miles in extent, was located a camp, consisting of a comfortable-looking log cabin, a small tent and a slab shack, open on one side. In this shack stood a mule that might have been a twin to Salamander, and a battered and rusty flivver. Scattered about were various objects—picks, shovels and some pieces of apparatus the use of which Rick and Chot could only guess at. From a tall tree, stripped of all lower branches and growing in front of the cabin, floated a United States flag, a most welcome sign in that wilderness.
But what attracted the attention of the boys, no less than that of Mr. Campbell, was not so much the camp, the flag (glorious as that emblem was) or the mule, but the sight of two men sitting in dejected fashion in front of what seemed a tunnel or cave leading into the side of the mountain.
And as he caught a view of the face of one of these men Rick joyfully cried:
“Uncle Tod!”
The owner of the name, for he it was, seemed startled from a deep train of thought, his companion likewise rousing himself from a reverie that the arrival of the touring auto had not broken for either. Then Uncle Tod cried:
“Rick and Ruddy! Shiver my grub stake, it’s Rick and Ruddy!”
“How are you, Uncle Tod?” cried the lad as he leaped from the auto, while Ruddy, who followed, frisked about his master’s relative and also made quick friends with the other man. “How are you?”
“Oh, so-so to middling,” answered Mr. Belmont as he put his arm around Rick’s shoulder. “And you brought Chot along, too! That’s fine.” He looked questioningly toward Mr. Campbell, and Rick made the introduction.
“This is my partner, Sam Rockford,” said Uncle Tod, indicating rather a gloomy-appearing individual who shuffled from his seat in front of the log cabin. “Well, Rick, you and Ruddy got here at last. Have any trouble?”
“Oh, not much,” said Mr. Campbell.
“But why did you send for me in such a queer way?” asked Rick, “and why did you go off in such a hurry? What’s it all about?”
“I’ll tell you when I get around to it,” was the answer. “It’s a queer story, but maybe we can get to the bottom of it now. Just at present, though, we’re up a stump, so to speak. Stuck—at the end of the trail—badgered—up against it—anything you like to call it—eh, Sam?” and he looked at his partner.
“You said it,” came in gloomy tones from the other. “Might as well call it a day’s work and quit, I guess. I don’t want any more of scouting around in that hole,” and he nodded toward the black opening that seemed to lead into a mountain cavern.
“What’s it all about?” asked Rick in wonderment, while Ruddy nosed here and there, trying to make himself at home.
“Lost River—that’s what it’s about,” answered Uncle Tod. “Lost River, and until we find it we’re in bad shape.”
“What do you mean—a lost river?” asked Rick. “Who lost it and where was it lost?”
“Ought to be easy to find a lost river,” remarked Chot.
“Not so easy as it seems,” said gloomy Sam Rockford, and the boys were to learn that he was always this way—the least upsetting of his plans, or those of his friends, made him utter the most dire predictions. And he was always ready to quit at the least sign of opposition. Though when matters went right he was the most jolly of companions. “We’ll never see it again,” he added, desperately.
“But what’s it all about?” persisted Rick. “Where is the lost river?”
“It was there,” and Uncle Tod pointed to the mouth of the cavern. “Where it is now nobody knows—I wish we did, for without it our mine isn’t worth a pinch of snuff. I don’t know, Rick—maybe I’m crazy as some say I am, but I had an idea if I sent for you and Ruddy we could find Lost River. That’s why I telegraphed you to come—to help me find Lost River. It’s in there—somewhere,” and again he pointed to the cavern, “but where, Sam and I can’t discover. Maybe, with the help of Ruddy—”
“Hark!” suddenly interrupted Sam in less gloomy tones than before. “Hark! I think I hear something!”
该作者的其它作品
《Umboo, the Elephant 乌姆布大象》
Sam Rockford turned his head to bring one ear—evidently his best—to bear on the black, tunnel-like opening in the side of the mountain. His listening attitude was imitated by the others.
There were a few moments of tense silence, even Ruddy standing at “attention” in response to a lifted finger on the part of Rick. Then Uncle Tod remarked:
“I don’t hear anything but the wind.”
“Reckon that’s all it was,” said Sam, gloomily. “I thought, for a minute, I heard the water coming back through the tunnel,” he went on.
“Is that what’s the trouble?” asked Mr. Campbell, with a more ready understanding of western matters than that possessed by Rick or Chot.
“That’s it—yes, sir,” answered Uncle Tod, and this time his voice was almost as gloomy as that of Sam Rockford’s. “We’re up against a dry mine, and the ore is of such a nature that water is the only thing that will make it pay. A dry mine—that’s what we’re up against.”
“But why did you tackle a dry mine?” asked Mr. Campbell.
“’Twa’n’t dry when we tackled it,” sadly observed Sam. “It was as good a prospect as heart could wish when I spent my money and yours in it, wa’n’t it Uncle Tod?” he appealed.
“It sure was, Sam,” agreed the other.
“And then, all of a sudden, the water petered out,” went on Mr. Rockford, gloomily shaking his head. “I sent word to Jake Teeter to give you the message,” he added.
“Yes, and Jake did—in his usual mysterious way,” said Uncle Tod.
“Oh, was that the message wrapped in a cabbage leaf?” asked Rick, eagerly. “We’ve been wondering about that.”
“Yes,” said Uncle Tod. “There wasn’t any need of letting me know in that crazy, old-time Indian fashion, but Jake Teeter always was that way—he never comes right out and says anything straight. If he wanted to let you know he’d been to the post office and got a letter for you, and you happened to be in with a crowd of others, what do you reckon Jake’d do?” asked Uncle Tod.
“I haven’t the least idea,” answered Mr. Campbell, for the question seemed to be directed at him.
“Well,” went on Uncle Tod, “Jake, instead of coming right out and handing you the letter, openly, would attract your attention, somehow, by making signs. Then, when he got you out of the crowd, he’d slip you the missive as if it was something contraband.”
“Why?” asked Mr. Campbell with a chuckle.
“Oh, it’s just his mysterious way of doing things. He lives on the sign language—picked it up from the Indians—he camped among ’em a good many years,” explained Uncle Tod. “Why, you’d hardly believe it, but Jake, instead of telling you grub was ready, would sneak up to you, and cautiously show you a knife and fork sticking in an inside pocket, somewhat like he’d taken it off a hotel table without the waitress seeing him. Oh, Jake’s the limit when it comes to sending mysterious messages.”
“And did he send you the stone and the bullet in the cabbage leaf—the bullet with the word ‘come’ on it?” Rick wanted to know.
“He did,” answered Uncle Tod. “So you puzzled out the ‘come’; did you? Not easy unless you happen to hit on it, but I happen to know Jake’s queer ways. He could just as well have rung the bell and told me that Sam wanted me to hurry out here.”
“What was the stone?” asked Rick.
“Piece of ore from this mine,” answered his uncle.
“Gold?” asked Mr. Campbell quickly.
“Copper,” was the reply, “though we hope to strike the yellow boys later on.”
“Won’t now—not with the river gone back on us,” declared Gloomy Sam, as the boys nicknamed him.
“Maybe we can get Lost River to flow again,” said Uncle Tod more cheerfully. “That’s why I sent for you, Rick. You helped me a lot in my salt mining,” he added, “and I believe you’re sort of lucky to have around a digging.”
“I think you’re right, Mr. Belmont,” observed Mr. Campbell. “Rick and Chot found my lost car,” and, briefly, he explained about the bank robbers.
“There! What’d I tell you?” cried Uncle Tod to his partner. “I said Rick was like a lucky penny to have around.”
“Um,” was all the reply Mr. Rockford made.
“But, Uncle Tod,” resumed Rick, “you went off pretty mysteriously yourself. Why was that?”
“I had good reasons,” came the answer. “There’s something queer about this mine, and there is a certain crowd of men trying either to get it away from us or make us give up the fight here and quit. As I didn’t want them to know of my movements I just sneaked off here quietly to join Sam, who told his friend Jake Teeter to summon me. It was Jake who stuck in the mysterious business when he didn’t need to. Though perhaps I might have left word with your mother that I was going, Rick. But I was in a hurry, and all worked up by Jake’s bullet summons, and lots of things slipped my mind.
“You see,” went on Uncle Tod, “after I bought this mine, and laid claim to it, taking in Sam Rockford as a partner, there were rumors that we’d be dished out of it. There were threats of claim-jumpers and things like that, and some talk about taking away our water rights.
“But as nothing like this happened we began to think it wouldn’t, and so I thought I could leave things in Sam’s hands and go east. I left word with him, however, to send me word if any rascals out here tried any of their tricks, though I hardly believed they would. It seems they have, but I didn’t reckon Sam would send me word in any such theatrical way as Jake managed it.
“I reckon Jake was going that way anyhow and he offered to let me know. Sam was glad of this chance, for Sam isn’t much on writing letters and he’s worse on sending telegrams. So he left it to Jake and Jake just naturally couldn’t resist trying some of his old Indian sign tricks. I’m sorry if it worried you.”
“Crickets! I thought it was nifty!” cried Rick.
“So did I!” agreed Chot.
“Well,” went on Uncle Tod, “I’m glad you looked at it that way. I only hope I didn’t make Schotzie nervous,” he remarked, giving Rick’s mother a pet nickname he had devised for her in some odd fashion. “You see I was sort of looking for some word from Sam, and when you boys burst in on me, when I was asleep in the yard that day, I thought maybe you had the message.”
“That’s when you said: ‘Has it come?’” remarked Rick.
“That was it,” said Uncle Tod, and he resumed:
“Once I got here and found how matters lay I decided to send for you. One reason was I wanted to give you a good vacation, and let you have a taste of the west, since you always said you wanted to come out here.”
“I did,” confessed Rick, “and you can’t know how thankful I am to you for letting me come.”
“So’m I,” chimed in Chot.
“Well, I just wanted you to come, and I wanted Ruddy, too,” went on Uncle Tod. “Maybe you can help us.”
“Nobody can!” declared Mr. Rockford, depressingly.
“Oh, dry up!” chided Uncle Tod with a laugh that took the sting out of the words.
“Um! That’s what Lost River did—dried up,” grunted Sam.
“Well, I guess most of the mysterious business is explained,” said Mr. Campbell, referring to the cabbage leaf message.
“Yes,” assented Uncle Tod, “I reckon you did puzzle over it for a spell, but it wasn’t my intentions, or my doings, even though I did sneak off quietly and, in that way, I may have added to it.”
“You did,” declared Rick. “And mother will be glad when she hears it’s all right. Mazie was afraid it was the Black Hand, or something like that after you, Uncle Tod.”
“No, nothing like that!” chuckled the old sailor. “But shucks! Here I go on talking and you folks probably want grub,” he exclaimed. “My manners must have gone prospecting with Lost River. Come on in, Mr. Campbell,” he invited, waving his hand toward the cabin. “We can put you up for the night, and our grub isn’t the worst in the world.”
“Oh, I’m not fussy, but are you sure you can put me up? I did count on keeping on, but it’s getting late and I don’t know this locality. I could push on—”
“No you don’t!” said Mr. Rockford with more enthusiasm than he had shown any time since the newcomers had met him. “You just bunk here. I’ll get something to eat,” and he began to bustle about with an energy and show of cheerfulness that was in strange and pleasant contrast with his former actions.
“Stay and eat hearty,” whispered Uncle Tod. “Sam loves to cook and get up a meal. He’s never happier than when he’s doing it, and it will take his mind off our troubles. Stay, Mr. Campbell. You’re in no great rush; are you?”
“No, I don’t know’s I am.”
“All right, just run your car under the shed there with my old flivver and Esmerelda—that’s the mule. I reckon there’s room for all three. Though as a matter of fact you could leave it in the open—we don’t get any rain to speak of at this season.”
“Well, I’ll just run it under the shed,” said the owner of the car, and this he did, after taking out the boys’ valises and his own overnight bag.
Meanwhile Sam Rockford was in his element, and he actually whistled as he built a fire and started to get supper, for it was now about time for that meal.
“How long since Lost River ceased flowing?” asked Mr. Campbell, as he and the boys sat with Uncle Tod in front of the cabin, while waiting for “grub.”
“It stopped a few days before Jake, in his crazy fashion, tossed the bullet and chunk of ore over your back fence, Rick,” answered the miner. “I didn’t tell your folks, Rick, but what happened was this: After my salt holdings were established I looked around for something to invest my money in, and when my former partner, Sam, told me about this claim out here he and I bought it.
“Then there was a good stream of water flowing out of the hole in the side of the mountain, and water is the one thing we need here to make mining in this locality worth while. I came out here, Sam and I established this camp and things were going fine when I left to pay your folks another visit, Rick,” said Uncle Tod. “Then, like lightning out of a clear sky, came the message from Sam and when I got here I found that Lost River had ceased running. Of course that put our mine up the flume.”
“Did it ever stop flowing before?” asked Mr. Campbell.
“Not in a good many years. In fact nobody around here ever remembers when it wasn’t running,” answered Uncle Tod. “But I ought to have suspicioned something, on account of the name—Lost River.”
“Then you didn’t give it that name?”
“Shucks, no! It’s been called that since the earliest days. I reckon, maybe, it had a habit of appearing and disappearing,” said Uncle Tod. “But we didn’t think it would act up this way with us—Sam and I didn’t. However, it has, and unless we can get some water here our mine won’t amount to anything. In fact the stuff is so fine—copper and gold—that it needs water to wash it out of the dirt. And as it is we can barely get enough water to cook with—and wash—once in a while. We have to haul it on Esmerelda’s back in casks from a creek three miles away.”
“No fun in that,” said Mr. Campbell.
“You said it!” exclaimed Uncle Tod heartily. “A dry mine, when it ought to be a wet one is the worst kind. But I’m hoping for the best.”
“No use—grub’s ready,” said Sam, gloomily, and almost in the same breath. “Might as well pull up stakes and quit,” he added.
“Not now—since Rick and Ruddy have come!” laughed Uncle Tod. “I tell you they are going to bring good luck! I’m sure of it!”
As they arose to go in the cabin and eat, a noise down the path attracted their attention, and Rick had a glimpse of a roughly-dressed man approaching. It appeared that he had tried to come up the trail unseen and unheard for as Rick and the others looked he seemed to be ready to dodge behind a tree. But his foot dislodged a bit of rock that rattled down the hill. Uncle Tod called out:
“Come on out in the open, Zeek! We see you!”
Wondering what turn events were going to take, Rick and Chot awaited the outcome of the advent of the stranger who had been addressed by Uncle Tod as “Zeek.”
“Who is he?” whispered Rick to his uncle as the roughly-attired man, seeming rather crestfallen over his sneaking tactics, approached more openly.
“Oh, a no-account chap—Zeek Took his name is. Ought to be Zeek Take, for he’ll walk off with anything that isn’t nailed fast—unless you watch him. Looking for me, Zeek?” he asked as the unprepossessing fellow shambled forward.
“Sorter,” was the grinning answer.
“Well, here I am,” went on Uncle Tod. “What is it?”
“Er—now—did the water come?” asked Zeek, shuffling his feet like a bashful schoolboy speaking a Friday afternoon “piece.”
“No, we’re still dry, Zeek, except for what water we tote up on Esmerelda’s back. But I guess we have enough to give you a drink.”
“Oh, no, thanks, I don’t want no drink!” Zeek hastily protested, and Rick said, afterward, that he might have asked for some to wash in and not be far out of the way, as he was somewhat dirty.
“Well, Zeek, is that all you came up to ask about?” went on Uncle Tod, who seemed to enjoy the fellow’s discomfiture—and bashful and discomfited Zeek Took certainly was.
“Ya-as—that’s all, I reckon,” and Zeek’s shifty eyes darted here and there about the camp, as if spying.
“Who sent you?” suddenly asked Uncle Tod.
“Eh?”
Zeek clearly was taken by surprise.
“Who sent you?” repeated Mr. Belmont.
“Why—er—now—nobody sent me! I come myself.”
“Oh, you did? What for?”
“Wa’al,” he slowly drawled as if seeking an excuse, “I—er—now—I thought maybe if th’ river wa’n’t runnin’ you’d hire me t’ cart water so’s you could wash out th’ dirt.”
“Oh, you wanted to cart water so we could do our mining, Zeek? Well, that was very kind of you,” went on Uncle Tod, “but what little washing my partner did before the river became lost, didn’t pan out enough metal to make it pay, and I don’t believe we could afford to give you any wages.”
“Oh, I’d be willin’ t’ work for my grub, Uncle Tod.” Everyone in that region seemed to have adopted this friendly name.
Mr. Belmont shook his head and smiled in a somewhat sarcastic manner.
“I reckon not, Zeek,” he answered. “We’ve got some new prospectors now,” Uncle Tod went on. “There’s one,” and he indicated Ruddy. “It’ll be about all we can feed in a dry camp. But if you’re hungry now, I reckon we can hand you out a snack.”
“Wa’al,” drawled Zeek, “it’s been a good while since breakfast!”
“Hum!” mused Uncle Tod. “Well, sit over there, Zeek,” indicating a bench, “and Sam’ll bring you out some grub.”
Then as Rick, Chot and Mr. Campbell entered the cabin, Uncle Tod said, in a low voice:
“Zeek isn’t just the kind you want to sit down to the table with—even out in this free and easy place. He goes at his food as if it might come to life and get away from him. He’ll be more at home out there.”
Uncle Tod’s camp cabin was a more comfortable place than at first appeared. The food was excellent, though not of the finest sort, but it was well cooked, and whatever else Sam Rockford might be—gloomy and inclined to look on the dark side of everything—he certainly knew how to serve a meal. The boys and Mr. Campbell testified to this, and Ruddy would have said the same had he been able to speak.
Zeek was fed out in the open, and soon departed, murmuring his thanks. And then, as the others finished their meal, and pushed back their rough stools that served for chairs, Mr. Campbell asked:
“Anything special about Took coming here, Mr. Belmont?”
“I don’t know whether there was or not,” was Uncle Tod’s answer. “First I thought he was only one more of the queer characters to be met with out west. Then, when he began coming around more frequently—but always sneaking his way in—I became a bit suspicious.”
“Is he altogether right in his mind?” asked Mr. Campbell.
“I don’t believe he is, and that’s why I think he’s being used by some one with more brains than he has.”
“Some one trying to get your mine away from you, Uncle Tod?” asked Rick.
“Well, I don’t know’s any one is trying to do that,” was the answer. “Still you never know when you’re playing safe in this mining game. The best way, I find, is to suspect everybody until you find out they’re square, and then it isn’t always safe. As for Zeek Took, I don’t want him hanging around; that’s all, though I don’t want to be mean to him, especially if he’s hungry. How he lives I don’t know, but I won’t see even a dog go hungry. Will I, Ruddy?” and Rick’s setter looked up into the miner’s face and gratefully wagged the plumed tail.
“I don’t know much about mining,” said Mr. Campbell, as he and the other two men were smoking their pipes, while Rick and Chot listened to the talk, “but how were things here before you lost the river, or the river lost itself? And I’d like to know a little about the stream, also.”
“Well, there isn’t a great deal to tell,” said Uncle Tod reflectively. “Sam, here, bought this claim first and then let me in on it. It looked good to him—in fact it looked good to me—that was when the river was running out of the cave. We call it a river though it isn’t much more than a half-grown brook back in your country, Mr. Campbell where you have lots of water. But, such as it was, it served to wash out the dirt we dug.
“You know there are many ways to mine for gold, silver and copper,” he went on, for the especial benefit of the boys. “In some parts of the mountains you dig out the ore dry, and you may get fairly big chunks of gold. Or the ore may be filled with little specks of metal that can be got at only when the rock is crushed. This crushed rock and dust is treated in different ways. It may be smelted or mixed with water and acids or other chemicals. I don’t know much about those methods.
“Then there is a simpler form of mining, the water method. You get a lot of dirt, gravel or what-not, and in it will be a lot of fine gold dust—maybe silver dust or copper—or whatever you’re after. We get both gold and copper here—or, rather, we did.
“The simplest method of getting gold out of the dirt it’s mixed with is to ‘pan’ it. That is, take half a panful of the gold-bearing gravel and put water in the pan. By moving the pan with a circular motion you can wash away, over one edge that you tilt down, most of the water and gravel and dirt. The gold, being heavier than the dirt, goes to the bottom of the pan and lodges there. You may get a couple of dollar’s worth from each pan of dirt you wash, or you may get a cent’s worth—it depends on the dirt.”
“It’s a sort of chance,” suggested Chot.
“That’s it—just a chance,” agreed Uncle Tod. “If you want to work the washing-out method on a larger scale, you build a flume box, or a rocker. Both work on the same principle. A flume box is a long, narrow box of boards with cross cleats all along the bottom. You wash the sand and gravel down this flume with water and the gold, being heaviest, goes to the bottom and lodges against the cross cleats where you take it out later on—after a day of washing.
“A rocker is a flume box on a small scale, only instead of the water rushing down an incline you shake, or rock a box with cross pieces in it, tilting it on a slant while you do it, and the gold—if there is any—lodges on cross cleats also. A rocker box is like a pan, only better.”
“Is that what you mean when you say ‘pan out’?” asked Rick.
“That’s it,” assented Uncle Tod. “Some dirt doesn’t pan out worth a cent after all your work. Well, here, we used the flume method,” he resumed, “that is we did while Sam had water. But all of a sudden Lost River proved true to its name and we had to stop work. The gold, what there is—and the copper—is so fine that we can’t get it out without a deal of washing. As a matter of fact I don’t believe it’s over going to pay to go after copper this way—not at the price copper brings now—since the war is over. But we might make gold mining pay if we could get water.”
“Where’s the water of Lost River gone?” asked Mr. Campbell.
“That’s what we’d like to know,” said Uncle Tod with a smile. “Where is it?”
“Have you looked in the cave to find out whether it hasn’t dropped through a hole in the bottom, and is flowing along somewhere beyond you—farther down the valley?” asked Mr. Campbell.
“We tried it—yes,” assented Uncle Tod. “But it isn’t altogether healthy—going in that cave,” remarked Sam, with a look over his shoulder. “I won’t go in again. If I did I wouldn’t come out alive!”
“What’s there?” cried Rick and Chot eagerly.
“That’s what we don’t know,” answered Uncle Tod. “Maybe you can find out—now you’re here—you and Ruddy.”
“But you must have some idea of it,” insisted Mr. Campbell. “What is in the cave?”
“Ghosts!” came the unexpected answer of Sam Rockford. “Ghosts!”
“Nonsense!” declared Uncle Tod with a laugh. “I admit we did hear some spooky noises in there, when Sam and I tried to explore after the water stopped, but it wasn’t them I feared.”
“What was it?” asked Rick.
“The danger of getting lost and toppling down some hole into unknown blackness, Rick. It’s awful dark in there. I guess it must be a tunnel right under the mountain where the river used to come out. Maybe now it’s dipped into some hole or new channel. Anyhow it’s Lost River in earnest.”
“This country was once torn by volcanic action,” was the opinion of Mr. Campbell as he looked around on the rugged peaks and the low valleys. “There may be all sorts of underground and lost water courses here, and your river was probably one of them.”
“Very likely,” agreed Uncle Tod. “Well, I only wish it would find itself again. Without it we can’t do any mining.”
“I’d like to stay and help you,” said Mr. Campbell, “but I must get on to San Francisco.”
“Oh, yes,” agreed Uncle Tod. “It was very good of you to bring Rick and his chum—not forgetting Ruddy. Perhaps among us all now, we’ll be able to solve the mystery.”
Mr. Campbell departed in his auto next morning, after an uneventful night, though Rick and Chot rather looked for some excitement—perhaps a return visit of Zeek Took after dark. But nothing like that happened.
“Well, boys, what do you say to some explorations to-day?” asked Uncle Tod, when breakfast was a thing of the past.
“Explorations in the cave of Lost River?” asked Rick.
“That’s where I mean. Are you game for it?”
“Sure!” answered both boys, and Rick added: “Aren’t we, Ruddy?”
The dog leaped about, barking joyfully, for he liked action of any sort.
“You going in that spooky place again?” asked Sam, as Uncle Tod made preparations for entering the cavern.
“Of course. Don’t you want to come? We’ve got to find water somehow, Sam.”
“Not me!” he exclaimed emphatically. “When I want ghosts I like ’em in the open. And as far as getting back Lost River goes—it’ll never happen.”
“Hum,” mused Uncle Tod, “gloomy as ever! If I didn’t know you better, Sam, I’d think you meant that.”
“I do!”
“No you don’t! Come on, boys. Let’s see what we can find.”
Equipped with lanterns and a long rope the three—no, four, for Ruddy went along—entered the mouth of the gloomy cavern.
What would they find?
Rick and Chot, to say nothing of Ruddy, were in their element—just where they most delighted to be—engaged in something venturesome and penetrating into the unknown. For the tunnel or cavern, through which Lost River had formerly flowed, was certainly unknown to the boys.
“And I don’t know much more about it than you do,” confessed Uncle Tod. “I wouldn’t risk taking you lads in, under those circumstances, except that we have Ruddy with us. I depend a good deal on your dog, Rick.”
“You mean to drive away any mountain lions if any come at us?” asked Chot as they slowly made their way farther into the dark cavern.
“Shucks! I don’t believe there are any mountains lions around here!” scoffed the miner. “Nothing worse than skunks, and they’ll give us plenty of warning. No, it isn’t animals I’m afraid of.”
“What then?” asked Rick, curiously.
“Well, I don’t exactly know. There’s some sort of danger in here, but what it is nobody seems able to tell. Sam says it’s ghosts, but shucks! I never saw a ghost yet that was worth a mess of beans! But, for all that, other miners around here say they wouldn’t venture into this tunnel.”
“Maybe they’re afraid of the water suddenly coming back,” suggested Chot.
“Well, there may be something in that,” agreed Uncle Tod. “But if Lost River starts to come back we can hear it and get out of the way. Besides, the river never covered more than a small part of the bottom of the tunnel—that is when it was running at its best. There was room to walk on either side of it, and it wasn’t deep in the middle. So even if the water should come back it wouldn’t harm us.”
“Unless,” said Rick, “we happened to be in a narrow part of the tunnel where the river filled it completely.”
“Well, yes,” admitted Uncle Tod, “in that case it might be dangerous. But we won’t enter any narrow part unless we see it’s safe. No, it isn’t the water I’m worried about. It’s some unknown sort of danger that Sam fears, and that other miners around here fear.”
“Have other miners spoken of it?” asked Chot.
“Yes, several of ’em since the water stopped. When my mine went dry, and there wasn’t any more chance of working it, I said I was going in this tunnel and see what the trouble was. I was advised against it by several. They said there was a story that, years ago, the water stopped running. Some Indians went in to see why and—well, they never came out again.” Uncle Tod shook his head dubiously.
“Did the water start flowing once more?” Rick wanted to know.
“Yes, it must have, for it’s been running for years. No one around here has ever seen it dry—it’s just a rumor that it was.”
“I don’t see what there is to be afraid of,” remarked Chot. “If it isn’t animals, and the water itself doesn’t nearly fill the tunnel, what can it be?”
“I wish I knew,” sighed Uncle Tod. “It’s like looking for something you don’t know about and in the dark at that—for these lanterns don’t give much light. But, as I said, I wouldn’t have brought you boys out here except I believed you might happen to think of some things Sam and I couldn’t. You boys are smart, and so is Ruddy. I trust a dog where I wouldn’t a man, in sensing danger.”
“That’s right!” cried Chot. “’Member the broken bridge, Rick?”
“I should say I did,” and when they repeated this story in detail to Uncle Tod—for they had barely mentioned it before—the old miner exclaimed:
“There! What’d I tell you? Ruddy is what we got to depend on. He’ll give us warning of danger, and I might as well say that what I fear worst is getting lost in here or tumbling down some deep hole. So mind your steps, boys! We have ropes to help us in case we take a tumble, but watch out just the same.”
Thus warned the boys stepped cautiously enough, and Ruddy, too, seemed filled with a wholesome respect for the place, as he did not rush about blindly, nosing here and there as he did out in the open. He kept close to his friends, going only a little way ahead, and not out of range of the glimmer of the lanterns. And then, looking back, he would wait for the party to come up to him.
“Ruddy knows his business,” said Uncle Tod. “I thought of him first shot when I saw what had occurred here, and that’s why I wanted you to bring him, Rick. Two boys and a dog are equal to any mystery that ever happened.”
They were now fairly within the long, winding cavern or tunnel that led under the mountain and served as a course for Lost River when that stream condescended to be found. Just now no one knew where the river had hidden itself, though it was reasonable to suppose that it followed the general law of water and ran down hill. In that case it must either be flowing under the feet of the explorers, perhaps a mile or more below them, or it was off to their left or right, more or less underground.
There are underground rivers in many parts of the world, and they are always more or less of a mystery. I, myself, have explored some of them, and have been puzzled, as nearly everyone has, over the strange behavior of the streams. They appear on top of the earth, and then suddenly dip down into a gorge that they have worn away, often through solid rock. Then they disappear beneath the surface of the earth, to appear miles farther on, having gone through passages never seen by mortal eyes.
Often it cannot be said whether the reappearing river is the same one you start to trace, or another that has taken its place underground. It is all guess work, and as such is very fascinating.
So you can easily see that Rick and Chot were delighted with this opportunity of being with Uncle Tod, and the danger of it did not at all worry or impress them.
“We’ll find Lost River!” declared Rick.
“Sure we will!” agreed Chot.
Ruddy, of course, said nothing, but from the manner in which he nosed about it might be assumed that he would do his share of the exploration work and warn of any danger he sensed.
Flashing their lights to and fro—for each carried a lantern—the travelers in the tunnel looked about them. Under the suggestion of Uncle Tod the boys were searching for some side passage, or downward dip into which Lost River might have slipped, thus keeping away from the mine where its waters were much needed.
Suddenly, as Chot stepped a little ahead of his two friends, and off to the right, the boy gave a cry of astonishment, mingled with fear and then came the thud of a fall.
“Chot’s gone!” exclaimed Uncle Tod, hurrying to the place where the lad was last seen.
Ruddy uttered a bark of warning it seemed as he dashed up along side of the miner, and only just in time, for Uncle Tod stopped short on the edge of a deep and black hole. Rick, at his uncle’s side, gave a gasp of fear and swung his lantern over the chasm.
“Are you there, Chot?” he cried desperately.
To the great relief of the two, back came the boy’s voice in answer:
“Sure I’m here! It wasn’t much of a tumble, but my lantern went out. Didn’t break, though, I guess.”
“Are you hurt?” asked Uncle Tod.
“Nope!” cheerfully answered Chot. “There’s a lot of old leaves and stuff down here and I fell on that. If you lower the rope I can get up all right.”
“It’s good we brought the rope,” said Rick, as his uncle uncoiled it.
“Yes, I figured on something like this,” said the miner.
It was not difficult to pull Chot up, for the hole into which he had fallen was not deep. The lad was bruised and shaken up, but not otherwise harmed.
“We have got to be more careful,” declared Uncle Tod.
But, with all their care the same accident happened again, a little farther on, only it was Rick who fell in. And he fell harder and deeper than Chot, with the result that he received a badly bruised left arm which gave him great pain.
“Want to go back?” asked Uncle Tod.
“No, sir!” exclaimed Rick, gritting his teeth to keep back a groan of anguish.
So they went on. But when Uncle Tod himself slipped over a small ledge, turning on his ankle with force enough to make him limp, and when Chot just saved himself from plunging into another hole, Uncle Tod said:
“I’m through! I’m going to give up!”
“What?” cried Rick. “Why, we haven’t explored half the tunnel yet!”
“Yes we have,” was the answer. “There’s the end now! It is shorter than I thought, and there isn’t a sign of water. I’m through I tell you. Might as well give up the mine.”
“What do you mean—the end of the tunnel?” asked Rick.
In answer his uncle pointed to the right and the boys could see daylight glimmering where, before, only invisible blackness had been ahead of them.
What did it mean?
“Yes, boys,” went on Uncle Tod, “it looks as though we had played the game out. There’s the end of the tunnel—it’s much shorter than I ever thought, for Sam and I never came this far before—and we haven’t seen a drop of water the whole length.”
They had walked to where daylight gleamed and found that they could pass out of the tunnel into the open. They emerged at the side of a hill, very much the same sort of hill that was behind the cabin at the mine camp. Below them lay the valley, winding off to the east and west—a deserted desolate valley, dotted here and there, perhaps, with the camps of hopeful miners, but which camps were too small to be seen amid the trees and bushes.
“The river was here once,” said Uncle Tod, “but it’s gone now.”
“How can you tell it was here?” asked Chot.
“By the way the stones are worn,” was the answer. “See how smooth and rounded they are, where water has been flowing over them for years and years. But there is no water now, worse luck!”
The boys easily recognized the dry bed of some former stream—Lost River beyond all doubt. But where was Lost River now? That is what they wanted to know.
As Uncle Tod had said, the tunnel was much shorter than he had supposed. They had come not more than three miles under the mountain—a long enough passage if it had been dug by the hand of man for a railroad, as it was all through solid rock—but the rushing water which had, seemingly, bored the passage, took no note of time. It had centuries at its disposal, and had worn its way slowly.
Entering the tunnel at the camp, the explorers had wound their way through it, with the comparatively unimportant accidents I have described, and had emerged through a hole in the side of the mountain. All about them were water-worn stones, and they could trace where the stream had flowed downward from where they stood, but in the opposite direction from that in which they had been traveling. In other words they had walked against the direction of the stream.
“And that’s the queer part of it,” said Uncle Tod. “All along, boys, we’ve been going up grade through the tunnel, and that means the water of Lost River flowed down, just as it did before my mine went dry. Now we get here and at this point the course of the stream shows that the water must have flowed the other way, in the same direction we have been going.”
“You mean this hole here, where we just came out, is a sort of diving place,” suggested Rick.
“That’s it—a miniature watershed. Back of us, in the tunnel where we just came from, the water flowed east. Here it began and flowed west—that is when there was any water.
“So I can’t see,” went on Uncle Tod, “any use in keeping on. Lost River was here, but it’s gone. When it will come back—no one knows. Not much use waiting for it, I reckon. I don’t see why Sam and I didn’t find this out before, but he got frightened by a lot of queer noises in the tunnel, and wouldn’t keep on. I didn’t dare risk going alone, and we never got as far as here.
“But this is the end—I’m going to give up now!”
“It’s too bad,” said Rick, nursing his bruised arm tenderly. “I thought we’d find something. What are you going to do now, Uncle Tod?”
“Oh, give up and go back east, I reckon. I’ve got other mines in different parts of the country, but I wanted this to pan out well for Sam’s sake. It’s the only one he has an interest in. But it wasn’t to be, I guess. I’m sorry I brought you boys out on such a wild-goose chase!”
“Oh, we don’t mind,” Rick hastened to say.
“I guess not!” cried Chot. “We’ve had packs of fun!”
“And we’ll have more,” suggested Rick. “We don’t have to go back right away; do we?”
“No, I reckon not,” his uncle said. “Might as well stay and have a little vacation while you’re here. And maybe Sam and I will prospect around a bit. Might happen to hit on some nuggets or pockets that would pay us for our grub, anyhow. We’ll stay a while. But now I’m going to head back for camp.”
“Through the tunnel?” asked Rick.
“No, we can go back along this side valley trail. Looks like a fairly good one though I haven’t traveled it myself. Well, it’s too bad, but I’ve got to give up!”
With a sigh, Uncle Tod led the way from this second opening of the mysterious tunnel, back toward his camp. And as Rick followed him there came into the lad’s mind an idea that, eventually, was responsible for the solution of the mystery of Lost River; all of which will be related in due time.
It was nearly night when the travelers, foot-sore and weary, with aching bones, reached the mine camp. Ruddy, panting and tired, stretched out in his accustomed place and promptly went to sleep.
“Well?” asked Sam Rockford inquiringly. “What did you find?”
“Nothing,” answered Uncle Tod.
“I thought you would,” was the gloomy one’s comment. “Well, what you goin’ to do now, Tod?”
“Nothing, I reckon. I’ll let the boys have a good time, and then I’ll go back east with ’em. This mine isn’t worth the powder to blow it up—without water to wash out the pay stuff.”
“I reckon not,” assented Sam. “But what did you hear in the tunnel, Tod; any strange ghost voices?”
“Nonsense! Of course not! But we came to the farther end which you and I never reached. The tunnel just peters out at a place where Lost River, apparently, ran both ways. But just now it isn’t running either way. It’s gone!”
“Doesn’t take a weather prophet to see that,” grunted Sam. “Well, you’ve got a few other claims around here. Might as well work them while the boys are having a vacation.”
“I reckon so,” agreed Uncle Tod, and his voice was almost as gloomy as that which Sam so often used.
As for Rick and Chot they were too tired then to think much about it—all they wanted was “grub,” and Sam prepared an unusually good supper. As least so it tasted to Rick, Chot and Ruddy.
It was two or three days after the disappointing exploration of the tunnel, during which time the boys, their sore spots healed, romped with Ruddy about the surrounding country, meeting miners and other characters who told strange tales of Lost River. Some of the more ignorant held that the stream, and the tunnel through which it formerly flowed, were enchanted, or under the spell of some evil spirit. But of course Rick and Chot laughed at this.
The two boys and their dog (for Chot claimed a loving interest in Ruddy) paid several more visits to the second opening of the tunnel—the place where Uncle Tod had been so disappointed—and it was after one of these visits, sitting by themselves in the mine cabin as they were (for Uncle Tod and Sam had gone out) it was at this time that Rick started drawing something with pencil and paper.
“What you doing?” asked Chot. “Going to write a story of Lost River?”
“Not much, though after we find it maybe I will,” Rick answered with a laugh.
“What do you mean—do you think you’re going to find it?”
“I might,” was the cool answer. “Look here, Chot, what do you think of that?” and Rick passed to his chum a sketch, or drawing, on which certain words were written. Chot studied for a few moments, and then his eyes brightened as he cried:
“Golly! Maybe that’s the way it really happened, Rick!”
“It’s worth trying, anyhow; don’t you think?”
“I sure do! Cracky! I didn’t know you were such a sketch artist. This is a regular pirate’s treasure map.”
“It may turn out that way,” chuckled Rick. “I’ve been thinking about this ever since Uncle Tod gave up, and it came into my head that this may solve the mystery.”
Chot remained silent for several seconds, looking at the rough plan which Rick had sketched out. He turned it first to one side and then the other, even looking at it upside down.
“Why don’t you stand on your head?” asked Rick with a chuckling laugh. He was happy because Chot appeared to agree with his theory, or idea, which seemed wild enough at first.
“I’m trying to look at it in all sort of ways before we tackle it,” Chot said.
“Will you try it with me?” eagerly asked Rick.
“I sure will!” came the quick answer. “But aren’t you going to let your Uncle Tod in on it?”
Rick slowly shook his head.
“Not just yet,” he answered. “I want to go back to the second tunnel before I say anything, and look around, now that I have drawn out this plan. I just wanted to see what you thought of it.”
“All right,” agreed Chot. “Maybe it will be best to say nothing until we’re a little more sure. But it looks all right to me,” he added as again he glanced at the drawing before handing it back to Rick. “How did you come to think of it?” he asked.
“Well, I got thinking how queer it was that all those rocks should be piled up there to the left of the place where we came out of the other end of the tunnel,” answered Rick. “It didn’t seem right they should be there naturally, and when I looked at them yesterday I saw they had been blasted out.”
“Blasted out?” cried Chot in amazement.
“Yes, some explosive has been used there,” declared Rick, positively.
“Then somebody must have done it!” exclaimed his chum.
“Sure they did.”
“On purpose?”
“Why else?”
“You mean they blasted away a rocky wall and made Lost River lose itself again, Rick?”
“Something like that, yes. But I can’t tell any more about it until we go take a look. We’ll go there with this map—maybe I haven’t got it just right, ’cause I made it from memory. But we’ll go take another look, and I can fix any mistakes I made. Then, if it seems to be like what I think, we’ll tackle it ourselves.”
“On our own, you mean?” asked Chot.
“Sure! Why not? If we tell Uncle Tod he may only laugh and say we can’t do it.”
“And if we tell Sam he’ll only look over his shoulder and say a ghost will get us,” chuckled Chot. “Yes, I guess we’d better go on our own. But we’ll take Ruddy, of course?” he questioned.
“Oh, sure!” exclaimed Rick.
The two boys bent over the drawing Rick had made. It appeared as shown on next page.
“Can you understand it?” asked Rick.
“Sure—most of it,” answered Chot. “Here’s our camp, and the flume where they used to wash out the pay dirt when they had water.”
“Lost River came from the tunnel, as I have drawn it,” went on Rick, “and the dotted lines show where it used to run in the tunnel. I’ve left off the top of the tunnel so you could see what I mean.”
“I see,” said Chot.
“Then,” continued Rick, pointing with his pencil, “we come to the opening of the second tunnel—I don’t exactly mean a second tunnel—”
“You mean the second opening of the tunnel, ’cause there’s only one tunnel,” suggested Chot.
“That’s it—yes,” assented Rick. “And at this second opening is where there was a division—the water seemed to flow down into Green Valley.”
“I see,” said Chot.
“And here,” went on Rick, “where I’ve marked it, is a pile of rocks. Now I claim these rocks were blasted out of the side of the hill and piled there, either by the blast or afterward. And, what’s more, Chot, I think those rocks hide another opening into the tunnel. You know, it branches off and goes under the hill again.”
“Like the letter Y?” asked Chot.
“That’s it. And I think Lost River came out of the left hand branch of the Y and flowed down inside our tunnel to a point near our camp. Then it came out into the open where Uncle Tod and Sam used it for the flume. Also, at the Y, some of the water flowed down into the valley at the place Uncle Tod calls a watershed, but not as much as went into our tunnel.”
“I see,” said Chot. “But what more is there to it?”
“That’s what we’ve got to find out,” said Rick. “If I’m right we may find Lost River somewhere in back of that pile of stones.”
“But if it’s there, why doesn’t it run out through the stones?” asked Chot. “They’re piled up so loose they wouldn’t hold back any water like a dam would.”
“I know it,” agreed Rick. “And what I think is that the river has been turned out of its course somewhere back in the other tunnel that’s maybe behind the pile of rocks.”
“You mean Lost River is lost in another tunnel?” asked his chum.
“That’s what I think, and it’s up to you and me to find it.”
“I’m with you!” cried Chot, eagerly. “It’ll be fun to be on our own, with Ruddy to help. But maybe Uncle Tod won’t let us,” he said, dubiously.
“Oh, I guess he will,” spoke Rick hopefully. “We’ve been off by ourselves a lot lately—we could go and stay all day—take some grub with us.”
“But maybe it would take longer than a day.”
“That’s nothing. We could stay all night. We’ve been camping before, when we went on Scout hikes.”
“Sure we have, Rick.”
“All right, then if we have to stay all night we will, but we’ll try to do it in one day.”
“First we got to get those stones out of the way and see if there is another tunnel opening,” suggested Chot.
“That’s right,” assented his chum. “We’ll do that to-morrow, and then, if we find what we’re looking for, we’ll start next day.”
Uncle Tod and his partner were so busy seeking another mine location, where they would not have to depend on water, that they paid little attention to the boys or dog. Rick, Chot and Ruddy could wander off where they pleased. So it was an easy matter to proceed to the second opening of the tunnel—the place where they had come out before.
They went by the outside trail, as it was quicker, and there was nothing to be gained by again proceeding through the tunnel. And there, as they looked at the pile of rocks, it was made certain to both boys—in the light of Rick’s map—that what Rick had said might very likely be true.
Behind those stones might easily be another tunnel, and in that tunnel—well, they hoped to find Lost River, or a trace of it.
“It’s going to be a lot of work—moving all those stones,” announced Chot with a sigh as they gazed at the tumbled mass of broken and jagged rocks.
“Oh, not so much,” retorted Rick, more cheerfully. “We can move one at a time, and all we need to do is to make an opening so we can get through. If we can bring the river back, the water will soon make a channel for itself.”
“Bring Lost River back?” cried Chot. “How you going to do it?”
“That’s what we’ve got to find out,” answered his chum. “Anyhow we’re on our own, now, and maybe we’ll surprise Uncle Tod.”
Then they fell to work upon the rocks, tossing the smaller ones aside, and, with long tree branches for levers, rolling the larger boulders down the side of the mountain.
And, as they labored, they wondered what mystery lay behind the pile of rocks.
该作者的其它作品
《Umboo, the Elephant 乌姆布大象》
“Not very much fun—this,” commented Rick, as he and Chot tossed rock after rock aside. “Like prisoners working on a stone pile; isn’t it?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” slowly answered Chot, as he straightened up to ease his aching back. “We don’t have to do it if we don’t want to, Rick.”
“Yes, that’s so,” agreed the other lad. “Here, Ruddy, what are you trying to do?” he asked, for the setter was acting in a peculiar manner standing at attention in front of a hole that ran under the roots of a gnarled tree. Ruddy was growling in a low voice and he showed every indication of anger, not unmixed with alarm.
“Let’s go over and see what he’s got,” suggested Chot.
“I only hope it isn’t a skunk,” murmured Rick. “He fooled me that way once and—whew—I’ve never forgotten it! Oh, boy!”
“I don’t smell anything,” remarked Chot, hopefully.
“No, not yet,” assented Rick with a laugh. “And when you do smell it—then it’s too late. But I reckon it isn’t a skunk. If it was he’d have been into action long before this. Mr. Skunk doesn’t stand much monkeying. He’ll give you two fair warnings before he shoots and then, if you’re foolish enough not to mind them he unlimbers his heavy artillery. Here, Ruddy, keep back until I can see what it is under there!” ordered Rick.
The dog looked toward the boys as they left the stone pile, growled again and then obediently moved away from the hole into which he had, evidently, seen some animal retreat, or perhaps he had chased it there himself, since Rick and Chot had not paid much attention to him.
The two boys cautiously approached the hole under the roots of the old, gnarled tree which grew out of the side of the hill not far from the pile of rocks. As he drew near Rick began sniffing the air cautiously, for, as he said, he had had one experience with a skunk that Ruddy stirred up, and did not want another.
“There’s a wild animal smell, but I don’t believe it comes from a skunk,” was Rick’s opinion as he drew near the hole. “Can you reach me a stick, Chot?”
“Here,” answered his chum, passing over a long slender tree branch. Rick poked it down in the hole, turned it around and jabbed it in as far as it would go. Nothing came out, not even a sound.
“Guess it’s a false alarm,” suggested Chot.
“Maybe so. Yet Ruddy isn’t the kind of a dog to bark up the wrong tree or down the wrong hole. Maybe the stick isn’t long enough.”
The lads looked around until they found a larger pole, Ruddy, meanwhile, watching them curiously and interestedly. But though Rick and Chot took turns poking sticks down the hole, turning them this way and that, and jabbing them in, not a sound—not a growl or snarl—came out from among the twisted roots.
Ruddy stood near his two friends, made little darts forward at the hole at every motion on the part of the boys, and whimpered in eager anticipation, growling now and then and, anon, permitting himself the challenge of a bark. But it was all to no purpose.
“I guess there’s nothing here,” said Chot at last. “We’d better get back to our stone pile.”
“There has been something here,” said Rick. “I can smell that wild animal smell.”
“Like in a circus tent,” suggested Chot.
“That’s it—sure! But whatever it was has gone out I reckon.”
“Animals have back doors to their dens; don’t they?” asked Chot.
“I reckon they do—this one must have had, anyhow.”
“What do you think it was, Rick?”
“Oh, a fox, maybe.”
“Couldn’t it be a bob cat?”
“You mean a lynx?”
“Yep.”
“Sure, it could. Maybe it was. Well, we’ll let it go this time, seeing it got away!” laughed Rick. “Come on, Ruddy, chase yourself around and get up an appetite for dinner,” and he threw a stick down the side of the hill, the boys laughing at the dog’s eagerness to retrieve it.
“Do you mind doing this, Chot?” asked Rick, when they were again busy on the stone pile, tossing and prying aside the rocks.
“Not a bit—why?”
“Well, it isn’t much fun to ask you out west on a vacation and then set you to heaving rocks.”
“We aren’t doing this for work—it’s because we want to find out something,” declared Chot. “I don’t mind if you don’t.”
“No, I don’t. If we can only show Uncle Tod how to get back the water of Lost River—cracky! Wouldn’t he be surprised?”
“I’ll say he would!” ejaculated Chot.
It was no easy task the boys had set for themselves, for the stone pile was large, and many of the boulders in it were of great size. But they were Scouts and not accustomed to give up a task just because it was difficult.
The smaller stones they tossed out of their way, and the larger ones, some only after many trials, were rolled down the side of the valley after being dislodged by tree-branch levers.
Once, just before noon, Chot straightening up to ease his back, looked toward the hole under the twisted tree roots.
“There’s Ruddy at the bob cat’s den again,” he remarked.
“I’m not sure it’s a bob cat,” said Rick, “but he certainly is there,” and he looked toward where Ruddy was now trying to enlarge the hole by digging away the dirt at the lower edge. “Come here, Ruddy!” called Rick.
The dog barked, came a little way toward his master, reluctantly enough, and then returned to the hole.
“He hates to leave it,” said Chot.
“Must be something there,” agreed his chum. “We’ll set a trap there to-night.”
“Where’ll we get a trap?”
“Oh, Uncle Tod has some. I’d like to catch something.”
“So would I, if it isn’t a skunk,” said Chot.
“Well, after all, it may only be a big rat, or some animal like a groundhog,” decided Rick, “though I don’t know whether groundhogs live out here or not. All right, Ruddy,” he went on, speaking to his dog, “stay there if it’s any fun, and let us know when it comes out.”
Again the boys fell to work on the stone pile. They could see that they were making an “impression” on it, as Rick called it when they stopped to eat some of the lunch they had brought with them, sharing it with Ruddy. For there was quite a hole excavated into the pile of big and little boulders.
After their meal, which was followed by a brief resting period, the lads again began tossing aside the rocks in their endeavor to see what lay behind them. That it was the opening into a tunnel beneath the mountain they hoped. And what they feared was that the pile of stones might hide but the smooth gravel side of the sloping hill.
“But it can’t be that,” decided Rick. “These stones never got here naturally. They were piled here and there aren’t any like ’em anywhere else around here.”
“Where do you think they came from?” asked Chot.
“From inside the tunnel that we’re going to find,” was Rick’s ready answer. “The stones were blasted out of the tunnel and piled here to cover up a hole, I’m sure.”
“Maybe so,” agreed Chot.
It was about the middle of the afternoon that Chot, again straightening up, looked at his hands and asked, ruefully:
“What’s good for blisters, Rick?”
“You getting some?”
“Sure! Aren’t you?”
“A few, yes. Say, what we ought to have are leather gloves, or leather pads like those the men wear when they’re paving a street with granite blocks.”
“All right, chase down to the five and ten cent store and get a couple of pairs,” chuckled Chot as he gazed around on the deserted and desolate valley, for not a human habitation was in sight.
Rick looked at Chot a moment, as if he did not understand, or was not thinking of what his chum was saying. Then Rick cried:
“I have it—bark gloves!”
“Bark what?” asked Chot.
“Bark gloves! Look, we can peel off some bark from this tree—it’s tough and stringy. We can take a piece, cut a hole in for our thumb, and tie the bark on with string. That will save the palms of our hands.”
“That’s a good idea!” complimented Chot. “Let’s try it.”
With their knives they stripped some bark from a tree, the name of which they did not know, but which bark was sufficiently tough and pliable to form a protective covering. Tying pads of this on their hands saved them from most of the contact with the rough stones, and the boys were able to work much faster now.
They paid little attention now to Ruddy, though occasional glances showed them that the dog was still worrying away at the hole. He growled and whined, looking occasionally toward his two boy chums as if he could not understand why they did not take the same interest as did he.
But Rick and Chot had other matters to occupy their attention. They could see, now, that they were making an opening through which was, undoubtedly, a screening wall of stones. They did not have to toss aside the rocks all the way to the top, for near the summit some great boulders had fallen, or been placed, in the shape of a rude arch, supporting themselves and the stones above and on either side.
“If we get enough of these lower stones out of the way,” remarked Chot, “we can walk under the arch just like through a gateway.”
“If it doesn’t fall on us,” agreed his chum, a bit apprehensively.
But neither boy dreamed of danger. Faster and faster they worked as they saw the afternoon sun waning, and when its shadows were very long suddenly Rick pulled aside a large stone and gave a cry.
“Hurry!” he shouted. “Here it is, Chot!”
“What?” asked the other, who had gone to the water bottle for a drink.
“The tunnel! It’s here all right, and some one piled these rocks here on purpose to hide it. Now let’s see if we can find Lost River!”
Chot and Rick stood side by side, gazing into the dark opening that had been revealed to them. More rocks were quickly tossed aside. A larger opening was seen.
“Shall we go in?” asked Chot as they peered into the murky blackness.
Rick did not answer. He was looking and listening.
Through the black opening that confronted the boys came no sound. It was dark and mysterious. Even Ruddy, brave as he was, seemed to feel some mystic spell as he left, for a time, the hole beneath the gnarled tree and came to stand beside the lads. They saw him slink back and his tail droop between his legs.
“Shall we go in?” asked Chot again, rather puzzled by the silence of his chum. “Ruddy doesn’t seem to like it, but maybe he’ll follow when we go in.”
Rick shook his head.
“Not yet,” he answered. “Let’s wait until morning, and then we’ll take lanterns, ropes and things.”
“And something to eat,” added Chot. “We may be gone all day. And are you going to tell Uncle Tod?”
“Not until we find something that’s worth while telling,” was Rick’s answer. “He and Sam Rockford would only laugh at us if they came here and found out we’d chucked aside these stones just to uncover a hole in the side of the hill.”
“I think it’s more than just a hole,” declared Chot. “Don’t you think it’s part of the tunnel?”
“I’m sure it is!” asserted Rick. “You wouldn’t get that much air coming from just a hole or cave. There wouldn’t be any current. But you can feel how hard this wind pours out.”
“It sure does,” agreed Chot, and, indeed, there was a very decided current of air coming from the opening they had uncovered by moving the stones.
“That shows there’s a shaft, or tunnel, with air coming in the other end,” declared Rick. “Now the thing for us to do is to go in and—”
“Find Lost River,” interrupted Chot with a laugh.
“That’s it,” agreed his chum. “But we’ll go back to camp and start out again in the morning.”
“And aren’t you going to tell Uncle Tod?” Chot asked.
“Nope!” decided Rick. “Let’s have something worth while to tell him.”
“All right!” agreed Chot.
And so it was decided. Perhaps the boys were foolish in this, but they did not stop to consider the risks they took. Few boys do. It is not the quality of youth to think. Rush into danger, and, if possible, rush out again. That is why youth does so much—it seldom stops to count the cost.
“Come on, Ruddy!” called Rick, for the dog, after a brief inspection of the “tunnel,” as the boys called it, an inspection which did not seem to indicate that he liked it—had gone back to the hole beneath the tree.
Through the gathering darkness, but along a trail they now well knew, the boys and their dog tramped back to Uncle Tod’s camp. They went by the “outside route,” as they called it, as distinguished from the way leading through the tunnel in which Lost River once flowed to wash out the pay dirt at the mine.
“Where in the world have you lads been?” demanded Uncle Tod, as Rick, Ruddy and Chot appeared some time after supper had been served.
“Oh, prospecting,” answered Rick, vaguely enough.
Uncle Tod laughed.
“Guess he’s a chip from the old block—meaning myself,” he said to Sam. “Did you find any nuggets?” he asked.
“Not yet,” answered Rick with a look at Chot to make sure his chum would say nothing of their discovery, which, after all, might amount to nothing.
“Well, sit up and have some grub,” invited Sam. “I kept the beans warm for you.”
“Thanks,” murmured Rick.
Fortunately Uncle Tod and Sam were too much occupied, in talking about a promising prospect they had discovered that day, to pay great attention to the boys, and so the men did not closely question Rick and Chot.
The two boys did not sleep as soundly nor as easily that night as they had on other nights since coming to Lost River camp. The reason was they were thinking too much about what might lie in that dark and mysterious hole they had uncovered.
However, youth does not need very much sleep to refresh it, and what Rick and Chot obtained was enough to make them as fresh as daisies next morning. They were up, if not exactly with the lark, very shortly following that bird famed for early rising, and after breakfast Uncle Tod said:
“Boys, Sam and I are going off prospecting. It’s in a hard place, or we’d ask you to come along. I don’t like to leave you here at the camp, but—”
“Oh, we don’t mind,” Rick was quick to say. “We’ll go off by ourselves and have some fun.”
“All right,” agreed Uncle Tod, “but be careful, and take Ruddy with you. That dog knows a lot.”
“He sure does,” assented Rick.
Matters were turning out just as he and Chot hoped they would. The boys and dog could take what supplies and food they needed and spend all day exploring the mysterious tunnel.
“It couldn’t be better,” said Rick exultantly as Uncle Tod and his partner shuffled off down the trail.
“That’s right,” agreed Chot. “And if we come back and tell ’em we’ve found Lost River—”
“Oh, boy!” chanted Rick.
They took with them everything they thought they would need in making the exploration, including food for themselves and Ruddy. They also carried water bottles, for though they were on the trail of a disappeared river they might not find it.
Behold them then, a little later, penetrating into the blackness of the tunnel, flashing on the sides and roof gleams from lanterns they carried—oil lanterns, with electric flashlights in their pockets for use in emergencies.
“Do you think we might get walled up in here?” asked Chot, as he and his chum, with Ruddy, passed beneath the overhanging arch of fantastic boulders, below which they had dug the hole for themselves.
“Walled up; what do you mean?” asked Rick.
“I mean if these rocks took a notion to tumble down they’d fill the opening we made and maybe we couldn’t get out.”
“Oh, I don’t believe that will happen,” said Rick with the careless and joyous abandon of youth.
And so they went in. Ruddy hung back for a moment, as if a bit suspicious of the undertaking, but when Rick called to his dog the faithful companion of more than one exciting adventure came on with a wag of his tail as if saying:
“Well, if anything happens it’s your fault.”
The boys had not penetrated many hundred feet into what was, undoubtedly a tunnel under the hill, or mountain, before they saw unmistakable signs that water had, at no distant time, flowed there. Marks on the floor and walls showed them this, and there were, on rocky ledges several feet up from the floor, masses of dried sticks, leaves and other debris that indicated how the tunnel stream, at times, rose to higher levels. In receding, this debris was left caught in cracks and on ledges.
“But where is the river now?” asked Chot, for there was no sign of moisture. The sides and bottom of the tunnel were very dry.
“I think some one took it,” was Rick’s answer.
“You do? Took it?”
“Sure! I mean some one has changed the course of this stream. Lost River used to run through this tunnel. Now it doesn’t, and some one blasted out a lot of rocks from the end where we just came in and piled them up to hide the tunnel. I believe some one wanted the water of this river for their own mines, or maybe for farm irrigation, and they just changed the course of it.”
“How could they?”
“That’s what we’ve got to find out,” said Rick. “Come on, it may be a long way to the other end.”
The tunnel they were now in was as black, as dismal and as mysterious as the one they had walked through, starting at Uncle Tod’s camp and ending at the heap of stones. They went carefully, to avoid falling into holes or deep cracks, and swung their lanterns to and fro. Ruddy, contrary to his usual habit, did not run on ahead, to explore on his own account. He kept close to the boys as if afraid.
The tunnel wound to right and left, like some gigantic snake. It was about twenty-five feet wide on the average, sometimes more and sometimes less. In places the roof was not more than ten feet above the heads of the boys and, again, they would be unable to see it in the gleam of their most powerful flash lights.
“Must be a hundred feet up or more,” said Rick after one of these tests.
“I believe you,” Chot answered.
On and on they went, stopping now and then to listen for any sound that would indicate water. But no trickling, murmur or a louder thunder, that might mean a hidden waterfall, came to their ears.
“Where do you reckon that river is?” asked Chot, after a while.
“You’ve got me,” admitted Rick. “But it has been here, that’s sure, and we haven’t come to the end yet.”
This was true, for the tunnel still stretched its black, winding and mysterious length ahead of them. The way was not without its dangers, for, more than once, Rick found himself stepping on the very edge of a black hole.
And once Chot would have fallen into a dismal chasm but that he caught hold of a projecting spur of rock and so saved himself. However these dangers seemed to the boys no more than others they had encountered when on previous excursions afield and in the forest. They were young and active, and to them a miss was as good as a mile, or “even a mile and a half,” as Rick said.
It was nearly noon, which fact Chot ascertained by a look at his cheap but reliable watch, and he was about to propose that they stop and eat when suddenly the hitherto silence of the tunnel was broken by a strange, mysterious noise. It was like some dismal giant groaning in agony.
“What’s that?” asked Chot in a tense whisper.
“I don’t know,” answered Rick. “Listen!”
Ruddy set up a frightened howling.
Through the air, over the heads of Rick, Chot and Ruddy, now seemingly on one side and now on the other—surrounding them, as it were—the mysterious noise came and went. Now it almost died away—an expiring groan it might be from some unseen inhabitant of the tunnel. Then again, it would fairly howl around them. And at the conclusion of one of these weird howls Ruddy again joined his voice to that of the unseen one, making so nerve-racking a combination of notes as to cause cold shivers to run down the spines of the lads.
“Whew!” whistled Chot, as the sound seemed to vanish into the mysterious black recesses of the place, “this is too much for me!”
“You’re not going to quit; are you?” cried Rick, for he saw the light of Chot’s lantern drawing away.
“Why not?” demanded Chot. “This is fierce! You aren’t going to stay; are you?”
“I’m going to stay and I’m going on!” declared Rick firmly.
“Well,” went on Chot, “I’m not going to desert, but when Ruddy howls like he did—that’s enough. There’s something unhuman here, Rick.”
“It doesn’t sound very pleasant,” admitted the boy. “There it comes again!” he cried, as, once more, the mysterious noise filled the black tunnel, which the lanterns of the boys seemed to make only the darker.
Around them, above them, on all sides of the lads circulated that weird sighing, howling, groaning and yelling noise, as though hundreds of imps of blackness were calling to each other in the gloom, laughing in fiendish glee at the plight of the boys.
Ruddy once more howled dismally, ending with such a queer note of protest in his voice that, in spite of his fears, Rick laughed.
“What’s the matter, old fellow?” he asked, as he patted the dog’s head. “Can’t you stand a little groaning?”
“If we only knew what it was,” spoke Chot in rather a chattering voice. “Do you reckon that’s just the wind making echoes in here, Rick?”
“First I thought it was the wind, maybe blowing through holes in the rocks,” said Rick. “I remember reading in the book ‘Tom Brown’s Schooldays’ how there was a ‘blowing stone’ as it was called. A man in an inn blew through a hole in the stone back of the fireplace and the sound came out of a hill half a mile off. I thought maybe it was like that here, but there’s no wind.”
“No,” agreed Chot, “or, anyhow, there isn’t enough wind to make all those howls. It blows a little, but not enough for that.”
The boys, as I have told you, noticed a wind blowing toward them through the tunnel as soon as they opened the closed end by removing the barrier stones. And after entering the black horizontal shaft they had been aware of a constant current of air in their faces, showing that there was an opening at the farther end which they had not yet reached. But, as Chot remarked, there was not enough of the wind, or air current, to account for the noises.
“If the wind made it,” said Chot, “we’d feel a sudden breeze as soon as the sound came.”
“That’s right,” agreed Rick.
Again echoed the howls and wails, like those of the fabled banshee of Ireland, but the boys only felt the same gentle air currents in their faces.
“It might be there is a current of air higher up, away over our heads, that we don’t feel,” suggested Chot. “That might cause it.”
“We’ll see,” said Rick. He carried a long pole, and on the end of this he put the handle of an oil lantern, raising the light as high as he could toward the roof. “If there’s a current there it will flicker the light,” Rick told his chum.
The two boys watched the lantern. It’s flame burned as steadily as when Rick had held it, showing that there was no increase in the air current higher toward the roof. And yet the strange sounds kept up.
“Well they can’t hurt us; that’s sure,” said Rick, as he brought his lantern down. “I say let’s go on.”
“All right,” answered Chot, but there was not much enthusiasm in his voice.
The mysterious sounds kept up as the boys and the dog advanced, but Ruddy no longer howled in concert with them. Perhaps he felt that it would do no good, and then, too, the confidence the boys exhibited, though perhaps they did not feel, made an impression on the setter. At any rate he seemed more contented.
And then, almost as suddenly as they had started, the noises died away. Gradually they became less in volume until finally the boys noticed it. Rick was the first to speak about it.
“Say,” he called to Chot, “we haven’t heard that howling for some time; have we?”
“No, and I wish it would stop forever,” said Chot fervently.
“It might be that you can only hear it in that part of the tunnel where we were,” went on Rick.
“How do you mean?” asked his chum.
“Well, I mean it’s an echo and you can only hear it in certain places. You know back in Frog Hollow at home, there’s one place where there’s a big echo, but ten feet on either side of it you can’t make it echo at all.”
“Yes, I remember that,” admitted Chot. “It might be like that. Anyhow the howls have stopped.”
And so they had—at least the boys did not hear them any more. This was a relief to them, and they began to feel hungry. They found some flat rocks, raised from the floor of the old river tunnel bed, and sat on these to open their lunch packets and water bottles, feeding Ruddy on the scraps and pouring out some water for him in the hollow of a rock.
“He hasn’t lost his appetite, anyhow,” remarked Rick with a laugh, as he noticed how eager Ruddy was for crusts and bits of meat.
“He hardly ever does,” agreed Chot.
Then the boys kept on again, moving cautiously through the black tunnel. At one point they came to a ledge of rock over which, it was evident, some underground waterfall had tumbled when the river ran through the concealed cavern. But now the cascade was dry.
“Guess we’re stuck,” remarked Chot, as he looked at the abrupt face of the rock over which water had formerly toppled.
“Maybe we can climb it on one side or the other,” suggested Rick.
This they found they could do, Ruddy managing to scramble up after they had helped him over the worst places.
Again they found a fairly level road before them—a road that sloped slightly upward, this slope giving the downward current to Lost River where it had emerged at Uncle Tod’s mine.
Suddenly, as Chot walked along a little in advance, he gave an exclamation.
“What is it?” asked Rick, who was flashing his light upward, trying to ascertain how high the roof was.
“I see daylight!” cried Chot.
Rick hurried to his chum’s side. Gleaming ahead of them was unmistakably daylight, coming through an irregularly shaped opening like another mouth to the tunnel. And, as the boys advanced nearer they saw, moving about, in the open beyond the tunnel’s mouth, several men.
“Go easy!” whispered Rick, catching his chum by the arm.
“All right,” assented Chot. Ruddy was held back. The boys cautiously advanced until they could look out upon a level place, seemingly in some valley and there, hidden from view as they were in the tunnel, they saw a strange camp.
该作者的其它作品
《Umboo, the Elephant 乌姆布大象》