The lame Indian youth did not even look behind to see if he was
followed. Digby Fordham was finally as much impressed as his chum. He
jerked Hero’s reins out of Chet’s hand and led both mustangs into the
shelter of the wood, where he tied them.
Chet coiled the lariat up slowly; nor had he followed John Peep far when
Dig rejoined him.
“Lucky I had this rope hung on the saddle-bow, wasn’t it?” Chet
observed.
“Going to take it with you?” queried his friend.
“Yes. It might come in handy again.”
“Huh!” returned Dig. “I’d rather have a gun along.”
“What under the sun do you want a gun for?” asked Chet.
“Well! you never know when you’re going to want a gun—up here in the
mountain, anyway.”
“Nonsense! You see that fellow isn’t armed,” pointing to the Indian.
“That’s his business,” said Dig doubtfully. “You never know when you’re
going to run into a mountain lion—”
“Pshaw!” exclaimed Chet Havens. “We’re not looking for game.”
“And that’s just when we run into something, sure-pop!”
Chet did not answer this. They were following hard on John Peep’s heels,
who did not once look back to see if they were coming. He was leading
them up the path which went to the abandoned mine where the shaft had
been caved in by some miscreant.
At the level of the plateau on which the shaft was dug, the Indian lad
struck off to the right, away from the Crayton shaft and toward the side
of the mountain from which the white boys had ridden. There was good
reason for John Peep’s having advised the tethering of the horses. This
part of the forest was a dense jungle, never having been cleared.
The trees were huge fellows, some of them scarred and riven by
lightning-bolts. Man’s hand, since the beginning, had marked this forest
but slightly.
The ground was rocky, ledges and big boulders cropping out between the
trees. It was really a mystery how the trees took root and held their
footing between the rocks.
The Indian kept on up the hill, slanting ever to the right, away from
the plateau. Suddenly Chet discovered that they were in a well-defined
path; but it was not a man-made track—it was not even an Indian runway.
It twisted and turned between the rocks and big trees, first going up,
and then down, the hill. Chet turned to smile grimly at his friend.
“Maybe you’ll wish you did have your gun, Dig,” he said.
“Huh?”
“A bear made this path originally, I bet! And many of his relatives have
followed in the same track. This path leads right to an old den, or I’m
much mistaken.”
“By the last hoptoad that was chased out of Ireland” ejaculated Digby
Fordham. “I’m not going to stick my head into a bear’s lair. Friendship
is all right, and fly-paper is no stickier than I am when it comes to
being chums with a fellow; but don’t you think this is asking a deal too
much?” and Dig looked up at his chum with a very queer look on his face.
“Hush up and come on!” exclaimed Chet. “If John Peep isn’t scared, we
can’t afford to be.”
“Why not?” demanded Dig.
“Because, in all likelihood, he thinks we are a couple of cowards—”
“Whew! After what you did for him?”
“Pshaw!” said Chet. “I helped him out of trouble, yes. But I didn’t get
into a particle of danger myself—you know that.”
“I don’t see why that Indian should have a poor opinion of us,” growled
Digby.
“Well, he has that air. He’s different from us,” said Chet, puzzled
himself to explain just what he meant. “But, you see, he acts like a
grown man, while we’re only a couple of kids.”
“Whew!” ejaculated Dig again, and with an air of doubting his chum’s
statement.
All this had been said in too low a tone to reach the ears of John Peep,
who was some distance ahead of the white boys. Now Chet quickened his
steps, and Dig came on, a little reluctantly.
The trio was approaching a mass of piled rock which was a landmark from
the valley ten or twelve miles below. It was some distance above the
level of the plateau on which was the Crayton shaft opening.
The beaten path was unmistakably an animal trail; but John Peep went
right ahead, entirely unafraid. Secretly, Chet thought the path could
not have been lately used by any of the species.
And young Havens had something of much greater importance in his mind,
too. He was vastly puzzled by John Peep’s behaviour. It seemed as though
the young Indian must believe he could help them get at the miners
entombed in the Silent Sue mine. Yet they were several miles from the
claim of Chet’s father.
The Indian boy’s seriousness had impressed Chet, however; the latter
believed John to be quite incapable of playing them any trick, when he
had himself been so recently saved from the landslide.
Gratitude, if not humanity, would surely inspire John Peep. He knew the
two white boys were much exercised over the situation of the men buried
in the Silent Sue mine. He could not be cruel enough to play any trick
upon them!
They rounded a big boulder at the foot of the piled rocks, and there
beheld the dark mouth of the bears’ den, low down on the ground. One had
to get upon hands and knees to get into it.
“Whew!” exploded Digby again. “Mebbe there aren’t any bears around,
Chet; but I declare this is just the place for a lion. Remember that old
scalawag we helped Rafe Peters to kill that time in Macomber’s wood-lot?
Just such a place as this he had to hide in.”
“There’s no smell of a lion about,” declared Chet, yet with some
anxiety.
“By the last hoptoad that was chased out of Ireland!” cried Dig. “I
don’t trust to my nose when I’m around where mountain lions may be—no,
sir!”
John Peep, who had said nothing, looked at Digby, however, with open
scorn.
“White boy maybe scared, huh?” he grunted. “This old den.”
“That’s all right, that’s all right,” Dig returned airily. “But some
stray creature might have gone in there since you were here last. And
what are we going in for, anyway?”
“You stay here. Havens come,” said John Peep, with deep disgust, and at
once dropped to his knees.
But Digby wouldn’t hear of being separated from his chum. “You bet I’m
going in there if Chet does, John! You can put that in your
pipe-of-peace and smoke it! If there’s anything going to chew Chet up,
his second mouthful will be little old me—and I bet I don’t set well on
his stomach, either! Lead on!”
“Umph!” was John Peep’s only comment.
“I don’t know what you fellows are aiming at,” growled Dig, getting down
on all fours to follow Chet, “but I’m in on it, whatever it is.”
Chet looked over his shoulder to admonish his chum.
“Don’t anger him. I believe he can help us. I wish we’d brought that
pick and shovel we carted up here on our horses.”
“What for?” cried Digby.
“I believe we may have use for them.”
“Well, I suppose we could make some kind of a showing in fighting a
mountain lion if we had a pick and shovel. But they’d come in better to
bury him with after we’d killed him,” commented his chum.
The Indian lad went ahead and the chums scrambled after him into the
bears’ den. The passage—the sides of which they could easily touch with
their outstretched hands—was as black as the inside of a coal-chute;
and it inclined sharply like a chute, too.
The passage seemed to be straight, and the chums heard nothing but an
occasional grunt from John Peep, who had difficulty in crawling with his
crippled leg.
Chet scrambled along after the Indian, and Digby Fordham, to be sure of
his chum’s position, grabbed him by the ankle.
“Stop pulling my leg, Dig!” cried Chet, his voice sounding muffled and
strange in the subterranean passage.
“I’ve got to grab you once in a while to make sure you’re here,” said
Dig. “It’s as dark in here as the pants’ pocket of a negro, stealing
chickens in the dark of the moon!”
“Stop your joking, and come on,” commanded Chet.
“Oh! you can’t lose me, boy,” returned his chum. “At least, you won’t
lose me in this hole. I’m keeping right after you. There! Tag! you’re it
again.”
John Peep grunted—whether in disgust at Dig’s nonsense or not—and
stopped. The white boys were right behind him. They waited, asking no
question, and soon heard the Indian boy scratch a match.
At the second scrape of the match the light flashed up. They saw him
light a candle in a rude tin lantern. It was plain it had been made by
punching holes in the sides of a half gallon bean can. But crude as the
lantern was, its glow dissipated the darkness.
“Whew!” came from Digby. “What do you know about this hole, Chet? Look
out! If you ever slip over the edge of it you’ll be a long time getting
back to the top.”
But Chet gave him slight attention. He was peering into the shaft that
here opened in the floor of the cavern. The lantern light showed that
the walls of the shaft were rough; indeed, there were natural steps in
it.
But a new rope had been fastened to a heavy beam laid across the mouth
of the pit; and there were knots every two feet or so in the rope, to
aid one in descending and ascending the shaft.
Chet turned eagerly to ask the Indian lad:
“Does it lead into the tunnel from the Crayton shaft?”
“Yes,” John Peep replied, simply.
“Say! no miner ever dug this!” cried Digby Fordham.
“Of course not! It’s an old watercourse. That’s plain enough. Long
before it was a bears’ den the water bored this passage in the rock,
found this shaft, and through it reached some subterranean stream.”
“Whew!” whistled Dig. “And who put the rope here? Not this Indian, I bet
a cookie.”
“White boys ask no questions, I tell no lies,” said John Peep
succinctly.
“Well! we’ve got no business to ask questions,” declared Chet quickly,
before his chum could say anything to anger John Peep. “We’re sure
obliged to you for showing us this place.”
“Come on, Dig. I bet this leads down to the very tunnel from the Crayton
shaft that father spoke about. Oh, my! if it enables us to get into the
Silent Sue and get father and the boys out—”
“All right. Lead ahead,” interrupted Dig. “I’m game if you are.”