TRACKING TROUBLE.
Merriwell dashed into the chaparral like a whirlwind and beat about in
the bushes trying to discover where the person was who needed help. His
hunt was vain. Several times he called aloud, from various parts of the
chaparral, but without getting any response.
“This beats the deuce!” he muttered, at last, withdrawing from the
bushes and throwing a puzzled look about him into the dark. “What the
mischief is going on? It can’t be that I imagined I heard a cry for
help. If I didn’t, why can’t I find somebody or something to account for
it?”
He was greatly disturbed by his failure to locate the source of that
alarm. Finally he gave up, and started to regain the road that led down
the slope and in among the mine buildings. Scarcely had he turned,
however, when that cry in the night once more smote upon his ears.
He whirled to an about face in a flash. “Where are you?” he called.
The cry was repeated, apparently coming from a mass of shadow, to his
left, and farther down the slope. He plunged on into the gloom.
“I’ll find out what’s back of this if it takes a leg,” he declared to
himself.
The next moment he stumbled over some obstacle, and fell forward. He
threw out his hands instinctively to ease his fall, but they came in
contact with nothing more substantial than thin air.
He dropped through space--not far, yet far enough to give him quite a
jolt when he landed on the hard rocks. After a moment he scrambled to a
sitting posture and rubbed his bruised shins.
On every side of him the gloom was thick. He could look up, however, and
see an oblong patch of sky, studded with stars.
“Thunder!” he exclaimed ruefully. “There’s an open cut on the slope, and
I’ve stumbled into it. That’s what a fellow gets for tracking trouble
over ground he doesn’t know anything about. But that cry for help! It
certainly gets my goat.”
He had lost his cap in his fall, and he groped around in the dark until
he found it. Then, getting to his feet, he made his way to the steep
bank and began climbing.
An “open cut” is a gouge in the earth made for purposes of exploration.
Usually an “open cut” is dug or blasted out in order to make sure of
surface indications of a vein, and sometimes it is made in the hunt for
a vein that has been lost.
Yet it made little difference how or what that particular open cut was
there. The fact of most importance to Merry was that he had fallen into
it.
His bruises were of small consequences; and many a time he had landed
from a pole vault with a harder jolt. When a youngster keeps in the pink
of physical condition, a hard fall now and then is nothing to worry him.
Presently Frank managed to paw and scramble his way to the top of the
steep bank; and there he perched, trying to figure out what in blazes it
was that had lured him into the pitfall. He could make nothing of it,
and at last turned his attention to the buildings below him.
That was not his first visit to the Ophir mine, by any means. He was
fairly familiar with the location of the different buildings, and he
knew that the cyanide plant lay at a considerable distance to the left
of the mill. It surprised him, though, to discover that his wanderings
across the slope had brought him to a point directly opposite the
cyanide tanks.
Cyanide of potassium, it may be explained, is one of the two
commercially valuable solvents of gold. This cyanide eats up the gold
and holds it in solution. For that reason, the drug is used in treating
refuse from a stamp mill. In such refuse--technically known as
“tailings”--there is always present a small amount of yellow metal which
the quicksilver on the copper plates of the mill fails to “catch.” If it
were not for the cyanide, this gold would prove a total loss.
The tailings are thrown into tanks, arranged in rows like a series of
giant steps. From a large reservoir, high above the rows of vats, the
cyanide solution flows by gravity into all the tanks below--entering at
the bottom and percolating through the tailings upward to the top, where
it flows off and into the row of tanks next below. The solution takes up
the gold as it flows, finally depositing its burden of wealth on zinc
shavings in what is called the “zinc box.” From the zinc box the
solution drops down another step into a sump tank, and from there, at
stated intervals, it is pumped back into the reservoir.
Merriwell was familiar with the cyanide plant at the Ophir mine. He had
been showed around by the super, and the work had been explained to him.
Consequently he was able to recognize the plant from the open cut the
moment his eyes rested on the black bulk of the tanks.
For the present the tanks were out of commission. A cyanide “clean-up”
is a long and tedious operation, and the work pauses for a longer or
shorter period while the work is going on.
“I’ll slip down among the tanks and look for Lenning,” Frank murmured.
“After I talk with him a while, I’ll return to the hotel and go to bed.
If the bullion is locked up in a safe, I guess he won’t have any trouble
taking care of it. Funny I didn’t think of that before. The strong box
here must be a regular teaser for a cracksman.”
Carefully he gained his feet and descended the rough slope to the tanks.
At his left, as he stood by the end of the upper tier of vats, was the
laboratory building, where the cyanide expert kept his store of the
deadly poison that stole the gold from the tailings, and where he had
his assay equipment, his furnaces, crucibles, et cetera. The building
was dark, and Frank, sure that Lenning was not inside of it, but on duty
around the tanks, paid the structure no attention.
Comparatively close to the mill, where the rumble of the stamps drowned
every other noise, to call for Lenning was useless. Frank would have to
plunge in among the tanks and look for him. Scrambling over the tailings
piles that cluttered the ground, he began his search.
Lenning was not in the vicinity of the first row, and Frank dropped to
the next tier. He wasn’t there, either. In spite of the gloomy shadows
cast by the big vats, the lad was able to see with tolerable clearness.
The third and last row remained to be investigated, but here the same
ill luck rewarded Frank’s search. Lenning was not in evidence around the
tanks.
Possibly, Frank thought, the new watchman might be in the mill. Or, if
he was not there, some of the night shift might know where he could be
found. Just as Frank was turning to start for the mill, he saw a flash
of light through one of the windows of the laboratory. He halted and
stared, a trifle bewildered.
Not five minutes before he had looked at the laboratory, and the windows
had all been dark. How did it happen that now there was a light in one
of them?
“Not much of a mystery about that,” he finally decided. “Some one has
gone into the place and lighted a lamp. It may be Lenning; or, if not
Lenning, then some one who has been helping with the clean-up. I’ll----”
The muttered words died on Frank’s lips. Under his eyes, as he continued
to watch the window, the light winked out and again left the laboratory
in darkness.
“I guess that’s easily explained, too,” he presently decided. “The
fellow that lighted the lamp put it out again. It was Lenning, of
course. As I went hunting for him among the tanks, he had to go to the
laboratory for something. That’s how I happened to miss him. He has got
what he wanted, and so he has put out the light and will soon be coming
back. I’ll wait here for him.”
Frank kept his eyes fixed on the dark side of the laboratory building,
where he knew the door was located. Every moment he expected Lenning to
appear, walking toward him out of the shadow of the laboratory wall. But
the seconds grew into minutes, and still Lenning did not come. The
waiting lad was forced to the conclusion that there was something
strange about all this.
“If there’s anything wrong,” he thought, “I ought to find the
superintendent, and report. But how do I know there is anything wrong?
Maybe all I see is a part of the night’s work, and if I went to the
super he’d only have the laugh on me. I’d better investigate a little
before I spread any news of trouble.”
The roaring mill, with its glittering lights, suggested quick help in
the case of emergency. Frank had a vague notion that it would be well
to go there and make some inquiries before investigating the laboratory.
But, if he went to the mill, the fellow who had struck a light in the
laboratory would have time to come out and get away unseen. If it was
Lenning, then he would miss him, and would have to begin his search all
over.
Another thought came to him, as he moved slowly upon the laboratory, and
Frank was surprised that it had not occurred to him before. A night
watchman, moving about among those dark tanks, would certainly carry a
lantern. Frank had been stumbling blindly around the tanks, hunting for
Lenning, when, if he had considered the matter thoroughly, he need only
have looked for a bobbing light.
“I must be getting ‘dippy’ over this Lenning business,” he reflected.
“I’m making mysteries where there are only commonplace, every-night
events. Probably I’ll find Lenning sitting in a chair in front of the
laboratory, guarding the bullion as comfortably as possible.”
He moved on to the side of the laboratory with considerable confidence.
At one of the dark windows he halted and peered into the interior of the
structure. A quick breath escaped his lips.
What he saw, in the black gloom of the laboratory, was a long, quivering
shaft of light. It crossed the big room, coming from a mass of shadow
and trembling over some object whose nature Frank was not able to
determine. But a thrill of apprehension ran through him.
Surely that penciled gleam was from a bull’s-eye lantern! An honest
watchman never made use of such a light--or, at least, no watchman whose
duty kept him around a lot of big cyanide tanks!
With this for a starting point, Frank’s thoughts took a dizzy and
horrifying leap into a tangle of conjectures. Perhaps Lenning was
working at the safe! It might be that he had asked for that job at the
mine with the sole idea of getting a chance at the bullion! And it was
Frank who had recommended the fellow to Mr. Bradlaugh!
A sick feeling ran through the lad as he stood leaning against the wall
and looking into the laboratory. Then, against these forbidding fancies,
he marshaled all that Lenning had said to him that afternoon--how he was
going to do the square thing, and that Merry would never have cause to
regret befriending him.
It did not seem possible that----
Frank’s reflections were suddenly interrupted. Above the mutterings of
the stamps, his keen ear caught a crunch of sand behind him. Alarmed, he
started to whirl around; but, before he could turn, he was caught by the
shoulders and thrown violently sideways. As he fell, his head crashed
against the stone sill of the window, and he remembered nothing more.
Blank darkness rolled over him, suddenly and completely.