CHAPTER VI--IN THE OLD TUNNEL
The lame Indian youth had no idea of giving up the leadership of theexpedition. He grunted, and pushed Chet's hand away when the white boyreached to take the rudely-made lantern by its bail.
"Me go first," he said with confidence, and immediately swung himselfover the edge of the rock.
In spite of his crippled leg, John Peep went down the rough rocksquickly, clinging with one hand to the knotted rope, the bail of thelantern swung over his other arm.
"He must have been often down this shaft," thought Chet to himself; butsaid nothing to Dig Fordham. He only wondered why the Indian had oftendescended this shaft into the heart of the mountain.
John Peep raised his face and spoke from the depths:
"Havens follow--'bout ten yards; then other white boy come ten yardsfurther back. Rope plenty strong."
"All right!" responded Chet cheerily. "We're after you."
"Whew!" whistled Digby. "If that rope should break we'd be after himwith a vengeance!"
The descent of the shaft was no easy matter, as the two chums fromSilver Run quickly learned. Three bearing their weight upon it made therope jerk and wriggle like an excited snake. Both Chet and Dig wereseveral times almost thrown from their footing on the rough rock.
"You're rocking the boat, Chet; look out!" grumbled Dig. "I expect tomake a dive over your head any moment. Ugh! that's wriggly!"
"Hang on, old man!" called back Chet. "That's the best I can tell you."
The walls of the shaft, however, did make a natural stairway; and at apinch one might have climbed down and up again without recourse to theknotted rope. However, the rope enabled the boys to swing from side toside of the shaft, as the footing seemed better.
John Peep's lantern cast sufficient light upward for the chums to seewhere they stepped. Indeed, all the light from the candle flickered onthe walls above the descending Indian; the bottom of the pit was inutter darkness.
It was a slow descent, as was natural, and the shaft was very deep. Asthey had climbed so much higher than the plateau where the Crayton shaftwas sunk, naturally this pit must be much deeper if it reached the oldtunnel in which the Crayton gold vein had petered out in the oldgold-mining days.
It was gruesome, too. Even Dig Fordham seemed to have lost his voice atthe top of the shaft. An occasional grunt from John Peep was all thevocal sound that was made by the three for some time.
The white boys' leather-shod feet scraping the rocks was the principalsound, for the Indian's tread in his moccasins was silent.
This continued until finally Dig could restrain himself no longer.
"By the last hoptoad that was chased out of Ireland! How long's thisgoing to keep up? Is that Indian going to keep climbing down this holeforever?"
"Hush, Dig!" commanded Chet.
"I did not make the place," said John Peep, with scorn. "White boyscared--he'd better have stayed out. Havens come. He not scared."
"I'm not scared!" yelled Dig, his voice booming in the shaft. "By thelast hoptoad--"
"And that's silly," interrupted John Peep quickly. "There is a legend tothe effect that St. Patrick drove all the reptilian species out ofIreland; but it is doubtful if the eviction included the so-calledcommon, or garden, toad."
"Whew!" gasped Dig. "Did you hear that, Chet?"
His chum was chuckling and did not answer. Dig tried to treat John Peepas though he were an uneducated "blanket Indian," as the uncultivatedredmen were called. But John Peep had been some years at school and wasnotably the brightest scholar in his class.
Why he had taken to the woods and preferred to live in the wilderness,now that vacation had begun, Chet could only surmise.
It was just then that the Indian reached the bottom of the shaft. Or,rather, he reached the place where a hole was broken through the wallinto the tunnel from the Crayton shaft.
Here a circular cavern had been hollowed out in past ages by the fallingwater; the subterranean stream finding an outlet at one side, whereanother pit dropped away into the heart of the mountain to an unknowndepth.
The circular cavern was a most beautiful place, crystal stalactiteshanging from its arched roof, while pointed stalagmites were strewn overthe floor.
It had been, however, many, many years since there had been a particleof moisture in this cavern. There was a good current of air, and it wasdry.
All this the white boys discovered when they reached the end of the ropeand stood beside the Indian, Chet turned almost immediately to thecavity into the mining tunnel. It had been recently dug, without adoubt, for there were bright scales of quartz rock lying about and apile of freshly excavated earth.
"Whew!" muttered Dig in Chet's ear. "I'd really like to know who didthis, wouldn't you?"
"It wasn't my father, I'll be bound," responded Chet, in the same tone."There must be somebody interested in the old Crayton diggings besideshim. Hush!"
John Peep came back to them. He brought a pick and shovel from somehiding place in the darker end of the cavern. To all appearances theywere new implements.
"White boys want to dig into other mine," he said briefly. "You come. Ishow."
"Heap good," grunted Dig, with a grin.
But the Indian paid him no attention, merely handing him the shovel,while he gave the pickaxe to Chet. Then he stooped to crawl into thenewly-excavated passage.
Dig looked at Chet and scratched his head.
"What gets my goat," he muttered, "is how that redskin talks one minutelike a college professor and the next like Poor Lo with his face paintedand a dirty blanket trailing at his heels. What do you think of him,anyway?"
"I think he has saved the lives of father and the men with him," repliedChet earnestly. "Come on, Dig! We're going to get them out."
Only a thin shell of earth and rock separated the bottom of the shaftdown which the trio had come from the old mining tunnel. Whoever hadburst the wall through must have known just where the tunnel lay andmust have been aware of its nearness to the ancient watercourse.
The loose earth was dropping in this short passage; but the drift fromthe Crayton shaft was well timbered with hewn oak. A single wide plankhad been knocked out of the shoring to make an entrance into the tunnel.
Down here in the heart of the mountain the planking had neither rottednor become dry and punky. The timbers all seemed just as good as whenthe miners had put them in.
"Come on, Dig!" repeated Chet, hurrying along the tunnel. "We can't getthem out any too quickly."
"Where are you going to dig?" queried his chum.
"Right at the end, of course. Father said he thought the Number Twotunnel of the Silent Sue passed by the end of this drift."
John Peep said nothing, but held the lantern and let Chet and Dig takethe lead. They came to the end of the old passage after walking somedistance. Here some recent excavating had undoubtedly been done. Therewas no rubbish in the way and they could attack at once the end wall.
The roof of the tunnel was a great slab of rock. The old method of"timbering in square sets" had been used in the Crayton claim, and thesquare cribs, filled with waste rock, upheld the roof of these workings.
What puzzled Chet was the identity of the person who had been sorecently working at the end of this abandoned tunnel.
"What was he working here for?" demanded Dig. "There's no sign of silverthat I can see."
Both boys thought that they knew a good deal about pay ore, both goldand silver. They were so much about their fathers' mine, and had heardso much miners' talk, and had seen so many specimens of ore, that theyfelt they were not to be easily fooled.
John Peep had nothing to say and the expression on his face did notinvite questions.
Chet and Digby threw off their coats and set to work. Chet first swungthe pick, while Dig shovelled the earth away. In five minutes Chet'spick rang on a rock in the wall.
"Hello!" exclaimed his chum. "Did you hear that?"
"I hit a rock."
&n
bsp; "And somebody hallooed," declared his chum, with confidence.
"Was it a voice? Do you think so?" cried the excited Chet. "So soon?"
"I bet you!" was the answer.
Chet attacked the wall with renewed courage. The earth and small stonesrattled down faster than Dig could shovel the rubbish aside.
"Hold on! hold on!" gasped Dig. "Let's take a breath. You'll bury usboth in this stuff, Chet. Wait till I shout again."
"Go ahead!" panted his chum, quite breathless.
Digby raised his voice as loudly as possible. Immediately there was ananswer--unmistakably a human voice!
"They're in there--and they are alive!" cried Chet, half sobbing. "Comeon, Dig! maybe some of them are hurt! I want to hear my father's voice!"