PORTER SHOWS HIS TEETH.
It was eight o'clock in the evening when Merry, Clancy, and Ballard
reached the mine and went hunting for the office of Pardo, the
superintendent.
The surface activities of a big gold mine, in full operation at night,
are as weird as they are interesting. The boys were deeply impressed as
they looked down into the valley where the mining, milling, and
cyaniding were going on.
The stamp mill, where the ore was pounded to powder and robbed of its
gold, was a huge, ramshackle structure. Although it had a framework of
heavy timbers, yet the strong skeleton was but loosely covered with
boards. Through wide cracks and many gaps in the sides of the building a
flood of light poured out, and the thunder of a hundred stamps filled
the camp.
Glimmering lights dotted the shadowy depths of the valley--some shining
through the windows of rough dwellings and others moving about in the
hands of workers. From the open door of, a blacksmith shop poured a
yellow glow from a forge, and against the roar of the stamps arose the
musical clink of hammer on anvil.
This blacksmith shop happened to be the first building the boy passed on
entering the camp. They stopped and asked the smith where they would
find the superintendent's office. The brawny fellow turned from the
anvil, stepped to the door, and pointed.
"There's the super's office, younker," he said to Frank, "where ye see
them two lights close together. Mebby he's there, an' mebby he's over to
town; anyways, the assistant super is on deck."
A person had to shout in order to make himself heard in the steady
tumult of the mill. Frank bawled his thanks, and he and his two comrades
pressed on toward the twin lights indicated by the blacksmith.
These lights, it was presently discovered, came through two windows of a
small office building. A man was sitting out in front, tilted
comfortably back in a chair and smoking a pipe. He was a vague figure in
the shadows, and the visitors could not see very much of him.
"Is this Mr. Pardo's office?" Frank inquired, stepping close to the man
and lifting his voice.
"You've struck it," was the sociable rejoinder.
"Are you Mr. Pardo, the superintendent?"
"Strike two, my lad."
"Well, my name's Merriwell, and I--"
"And you've come here for a talk with that old hassayamper, Nick
Porter!" finished Pardo. "Mr. Bradlaugh has put me next." The super
laughed. "I suppose you know what a brilliant talker the prospector is?"
Unless violently agitated, about the only audible sound Porter ever made
was a grunt.
"We know all about that," Frank answered.
"Well," continued the super, "after the way he went off the handle in
Gold Hill he seems to be less talkative than usual. And less audible,"
he added. "Whenever he bobs up in Ophir he makes it a rule to hang out
in this camp, mainly because one of our crusherman on the night shift is
an old friend of his. But he's a crusty old curmudgeon, and I never
hanker much to have him around. He's up in the head of the mill with Joe
Bosley now. Come on, Merriwell, and I'll show you and your friends where
to find this precious prospector."
The obliging superintendent got out of his comfortable chair and started
along a camp trail that led up a steep incline. Along the top of the
rise showed one side of the mill glowing ruddily against the night sky.
Here there was a long, elevated platform upon which ore from the mine
was unloaded. A man could be seen moving spectrally around and shoveling
ore into a crusher set in the mill wall.
Pardo paused, halfway up the low hill and drew Merriwell toward him.
"That's Bosley, the crusherman," said he. "He'll tell you where you can
find Porter. Bring the prospector to my office, if you like. It isn't
quite so noisy as the mill, and you can talk to better advantage."
The super turned and went back. Frank and his friends moved on to the
ore platform, jumped to the top of it, and yelled their query at Bosley.
"Nick?" the crusherman bawled, leaning for a moment on his shovel, and
appraising the boys as well as he could. "Oh, he's communin' with
himself in the feed loft. Right through that hole," he finished,
pointing to an opening in the wall, "and down the steps."
Frank led the way through the opening, and, at the foot of the steps, he
and his chums found themselves in a small inferno. The bright,
shimmering stems of twenty batteries, each of five stamps, were marking
time before their eyes like, a row of steel soldiers. Each stamp weighed
eight hundred and fifty pounds, and it rose and fell ninety-five times
to the minute. The uproar was steady and deafening.
Ore feeders were shoveling crushed ore into the stamp hoppers. Frank's
eyes ranged over the sweating, seminude, powerful figures as they
worked. He could see nothing of Nick Porter.
While Frank's eyes were searching the loft, Clancy nudged him with an
elbow. Frank turned, and Clancy made signs and pointed. Looking in the
direction indicated by Clancy's finger, Frank saw the slouching form of
Porter, the prospector.
He was sitting on a keg in an angle of the wall. He was leaning back
against the boards behind him, a cob pipe between his teeth. His eyes,
peering out of the jungle of beard that covered his face, were fixed
speculatively on the three boys.
Merry immediately stepped to the prospector's side. "Hello, Porter!" he
yelled in his ear.
The prospector probably grunted, although Frank could hear nothing.
"I want to talk with you for a few minutes," Merry went on, in a manner
calculated to disarm any suspicions Porter may have had. "Come up to the
super's office, will you?"
He stepped back. The prospector sat still on the keg for a moment, then
slowly knocked the ashes from his pipe and stood up. Frank was
congratulating himself that Porter was to make for Pardo's office
without any further persuasion; but in this he was mistaken.
Clancy stood on the prospector's right, Merry in front of him, and
Ballard on the left--between the spot where, Porter was standing and the
opening that led into the feed loft. The prospector slipped his pipe
into his pocket, moving in a slow, sluggish way that suggested
weariness.
He was not weary, however. Suddenly, without warning of any sort, he put
out one arm and threw Clancy sideways, so that he fell over a heap of
crushed stone. Another moment and Porter had leaped for a flight of
stairs and had vanished downward into the body of the mill.
It was all so quickly done that Frank was taken by surprise. The thought
flashed through his mind that Porter, unless he knew something about
Professor Borrodaile and suspected why the boys were there, would not be
showing his teeth in that fashion. An instant after the prospector had
disappeared down the stairs, Frank jumped after him. Ballard followed
close on Frank's heels; and Clancy, hastily picking himself up, stifled
an exclamation of anger and rushed after Ballard.
The stairs led down to the floor where the boxes were placed, and where
the plates, whose silver recovered the gold from the ore, stretched the
length of the mill. Amalgamators and batterymen were going and coming
through all the pounding racket of this part of the establishment, but
the prospector had somehow managed to lose himself.
So suddenly and completely had Porter disappeared that it seemed little
short of magical. Frank took three or four steps from the foot of the
stairs, peering along the row of plates covered with dirty water from
the battery boxes, and looking back into the shadowy recesses under the
ore loft.
He was asking himself if Porter would have had time to get away into the
darkness back of the batteries, when a red-shirted amalgamator stepped
to his side.
"Lookin' fer Porter?" he yelled.
Frank nodded.
"He ducked out o' the door yonder," and the amalgamator, with a jerk of
his thumb, indicated an opening that led out into the night.
Ballard was nearest the door. He had heard the amalgamator, and whirled
like lightning and dashed out of the mill and into the darkness.
Frank was tight at his heels, while Clancy brought up the rear of the
little file of pursuers. The noise was not so deafening outside the
mill, but the boys were blinded temporarily by their quick transition
from the bright glow of the mill to the outer gloom. They stared around
them, but could see nothing of the prospector.
Ballard, however, heard something or other which gave him a clew. "This
way!" he shouted.
Frank heard his chum's feet swiftly crunching the sand and gravel, and
followed the sound. In a moment or two his vision cleared somewhat and
he was able to see several rows of huge wooden tanks. A plank incline
led to the top of one row, and Ballard could be distinguished racing up
the incline. Beyond Ballard, traveling at speed over a plank gangway
that spanned the tanktops, was a burly figure silhouetted against the
lighter gloom of the night. With a shout to Clancy, Merriwell hustled
after Ballard.
Those tanks were part of the cyanide plant, wherein the refuse of the
mill was treated with deadly cyanide of potassium for recovering what
little gold was left after the refuse, or "tailings," had come from the
stamp mill.
The cyanide plant, presumably, was familiar ground to Porter, whereas
the boys had never seen it before. In the gloom the prospector could
navigate across the big vats with something like accuracy, while the
boys carried on their pursuit at a tremendous disadvantage.
Recklessly Ballard ran on. Merriwell called a warning to him, but
Ballard either did not hear it or else paid no attention.
The form of the prospector, leaping and plunging onward, sprang from one
row of vats to another. Each row was a little lower than the row to the
north, so that the tiers took on the form of a flight of giant steps.
Porter gained the top tier, and stood for a moment on a plank spanning a
vat that was three or four times as large as any of the others. Ballard
climbed to the same plank. Porter dropped down with a savage, snarling
cry. Clinging for a moment to the edge of the tank, he twisted the plank
from under Ballard's feet. Ballard dropped with a splash.
"Merciful powers!" yelled a voice in wild alarm. "Get him out, quick!
That's the solution tank and is filled with cyanide!"
Merriwell's heart almost stopped beating. In a gleam of light from the
mill he saw the white, drawn face of Pardo peering toward the spot where
Ballard was splashing in the deadly cyanide solution. An instant later
he bounded to the rescue.