LOST UNDERGROUND
Dick Kent regained consciousness slowly. His head pained severely, and
as he passed his hand through his hair his fingers encountered something
warm and sticky. All was silent in the canyon. He sat up with a start,
all coming back to him—the mysterious voice from the canyon wall, the
surprise attack, the blow that had felled him.
“Sandy! Sandy!” he shouted hoarsely. But the dark canyon gave back his
voice in a hollow echo. There was no answer.
“Where have they gone?” Dick wondered. “Have they been killed or
captured?”
He got dizzily to his feet and stumbled along the canyon, feeling his
way. Almost immediately, he felt a depression in the rock. In the
starlight a dark hole yawned in the wall.
“The cave!” he exulted.
Just then he stumbled over something solid, yet yielding. Groping about
his feet, he recoiled in horror. It was the face of a man! In the
starlight he finally made out the body, and saw that it was not one of
his party.
Again Dick called out Sandy’s name, but only the echo of his voice from
the yawning cavern answered him.
Dick’s head was clearing now. He thought swiftly and concluded his
companions must have gone into the cavern in search of Walter MacClaren.
He turned in and groped his way along, calling every now and then. Once
he thought he heard a shout and stopped, but all was silent.
He had a few matches in his pocket and he drew one out and lighted it.
He found himself in a large cave, evidently formed by the erosion of
water. The roof of the cavern was some six feet higher than his head.
Where he was standing there seemed but one passage.
“Well, I can’t get lost if there’s only the main passage,” Dick decided,
and started on boldly, feeling his way in the blackness.
The cavern slanted downward slightly, and leading forward fairly
straight, Dick made good time, though he tested every bit of footing to
make certain he did not step off into a hole, or run into an
obstruction.
Presently he could hear running water, and as the sound grew louder, he
lighted another match. There was no disturbance of air and the flame
burned steadily. Dick could see that the cavern branched at this point.
Down one passage a swift stream of dark water flowed; the other was dry.
About to take to the cavern that was dry underfoot, Dick heard a shout
somewhere in the cave before him. He thrilled as he recognized Sandy’s
voice.
“Sandy, Sandy, here I am!” he answered at the top of his lungs, hurrying
down the cavern from which he believed the voice had come. Once more he
heard Sandy’s shout, but this time it was fainter. Then he heard it no
longer.
“There must be tracks if anyone has passed here,” Dick thought, and
striking a match, stooped down. Plainly, in the moist floor of the
cavern, were the tracks of moccasins. But they were directed both
forward and back, and meant very little.
Thinking to catch Sandy before he was too far away, Dick hastened
forward with less caution. He had advanced some fifty yards, when of a
sudden the earth gave way under him. His cry of terror was drowned by
the sound of falling stones and gravel, as he pitched downward. His
clutching hands encountered a rim of solid rock. With a painful jerk he
stopped his fall, dangling there by his fingers over a chasm he knew not
how deep.
Once he regained his breath and sense, he endeavored to pull himself up.
But he could not quite make it. The hole bulged outward under his feet
and, kick and thresh as he would, he could not get a foothold anywhere.
The rim he was clinging to was so narrow that it was impossible for him
to hold his body up on it even if he pulled himself up by the hands. He
realized that he was part way down the hole, hanging to the conical
wall.
Dick’s struggles slowly weakened. His head was paining him severely. He
realized that he could not hang on much longer, yet gritting his teeth,
he clung on while his muscles burned and his fingers grew numb.
With his last remaining strength, he shouted. But it seemed that his
voice was deadened by the formation of the hole, as if he had shouted
into a barrel. But again and again he raised his voice, though it grew
weaker and weaker.
He did not know whether he imagined it or not, but he thought his last
outcry received an answer. Slowly he was losing consciousness. It seemed
that he could hear the pad, pad of moccasins and more voices. A hand
grasped his wrists, then he gave out.
When once more Dick awakened he found himself in a dimly lighted
underground room. Some one was pouring something hot between his teeth.
“Sandy!” he started up, looking into his chum’s happy face.
“Greetin’s, lad,” called Malemute Slade, smiling down from the other
side of him, “you’ve had a tough time of it.”
“I thought it was all over with as far as I was concerned,” replied
Dick.
“Uncle Walter is here, but he’s pretty sick,” Sandy was telling him. “We
found him in this room, almost dead from starvation. He seems to be a
little better since we fed him some hot broth.”
Dick raised up, his aching head swimming. Across the room, watched over
by Toma, on a heap of balsam boughs, he saw a bearded man, haggard of
face. It was Walter MacClaren.
“I guess I can stand on my pins now,” declared Dick. “But where did you
all go right after I was knocked out?”
“The devils drove us right into the cave,” volunteered Malemute Slade.
“It was a running fight till I climbed on a shelf of rock an’ dropped
down on the beans of a couple of ’em. I cracked their pates, then we
choked the other one till he told us where the lad’s uncle was. Me—I
guess I’ve got about all I want of fightin’ for today.”
“I heard you shouting,” Sandy explained, “but you were in the wrong
branch of the cavern. I had to go clear down to the fork before I found
where you were. You had just about let go of the rock. I was scared to
death when I had pulled you out. I struck a match—and say!—that hole
didn’t seem to have any bottom.”
Dick shuddered, but smiled grimly. He had had a close shave—they had all
had a close shave—but things had come out right in the end.
Malemute Slade had located the store of food kept by MacClaren’s guards,
and they sat down and had a bite to eat. Then, they all gathered
anxiously around Walter MacClaren. With eyes shining, Sandy stooped
forward and patted his uncle’s hand.
“Everything is all right now,” the youth muttered happily. “I’m sure
that Uncle Walt will get better.”
For several minutes they stood there in the half-light, looking down at
the recumbent figure of the man, whose life they had saved barely in the
nick of time. Except for their quiet breathing and the low trickle of
water in an alcove close at hand, the deep hush remained unbroken. Then,
unexpectedly, MacClaren stirred, muttering in his sleep. His eyes
blinked open.
His gaze wavered from one to the other of the little company gathered
around him, and slowly a smile played across his lips.
“Up in a few days,” he managed to articulate weakly. “Thanks—everyone of
you! I’ll be feeling fine in the morning.”
Then, with another smile, he rolled over on his side and went back to
sleep. In a surge of new-found happiness, Dick nodded significantly at
Sandy, and, arm-in-arm, they turned quietly and tip-toed out of the
room.
THE END
Transcriber’s Notes
--Copyright notice provided as in the original—this e-text is public
domain in the country of publication.
--Silently corrected palpable typos; left non-standard spellings and
dialect unchanged.
--Added a Table of Contents based on chapter headings.
--In the text versions, delimited italics text in _underscores_ (the
HTML version reproduces the font form of the printed book.)