Could they see us, or could they not?
It was a hard trial sitting there motionless, wondering whether those
eager, searching eyes could penetrate as far through the gloom as where
we sat. It seemed they could not, as, for full ten minutes, their
owners rested there peering over the massive rocks.
The least movement on our part, a whinny or a snort from the mules,
would have been sufficient to have betrayed our whereabouts, and
bloodshed would, perhaps, have followed; but all remained still, save
once, when I heard Tom's gun-lock give a faint click just as first one
and then another head was being withdrawn.
"There, Mas'r Harry," said Tom in a whisper. "What do you think of
that? They're on the look-out for us you see. And we got grumbling
about the little dam breaking, when what did it break to do? Why, to
smooth over the rough work we had done, so as those copper-coloured
gentlemen shouldn't see it and make a row. But, say Mas'r Harry, I
a'most wonder they didn't see the water look thick. P'r'aps they will
yet, so I wouldn't move."
Tom's advice was so good that we sat for quite a couple of hours, when I
told him of the plans I had made.
"Tom," I said, "it was an act of folly for us to be working there
without one of us watching. I tell you what we must do, we must rest
till it begins to grow dusk, and then begin working in the dark. Do you
see?"
"Well, I can see now, Mas'r Harry," said Tom grinning; "but I don't see
how I'm going to see then. How so be: just as you like. I'm ready when
you are."
The afternoon passed, the sun disappeared behind the mountains, and the
dark shadows began to fall, just as with a loud shriek bird after bird
winged its way out of the cavern for its nightly quest of food. We
stole to the barrier, looked long and cautiously down the valley, and
then set to work in the dim and fast-fading light to dam the stream--
this time taking the precaution to lay lumps of rock and stalactites in
the bed to support our embankment of sand and earth; when once more the
stream took another course, the bed was dry, and in silence we stepped
down to the site of our former labours.
I was not so sanguine now of the toil proving remunerative; but from the
little knowledge I possessed of the Indian's superstitious character I
felt pretty sure that they would not venture by night to a cavern whose
interior was clothed by them with endless mysterious terrors, though it
possessed terrors enough, as we well knew, without the aid of
superstition. But all the same, there was the chance of others having
an object in watching us, so every spadeful was thrown out in silence,
every word spoken in a whisper. The night came on impenetrably black
and obscure, but we worked on, feeling our way lower and lower, taking
turn and turn, till once more we stood in the pit we had dug, and
commenced groping about with our hands, for the spades told us that we
had come to whatever was buried.
"More of these yaller stones," said Tom.
We threw out as quietly as we could a couple of hundred rough lumps
about the size of those fragments of granite used for macadamising a
modern road.
"Tom," I said, after trying about with my spade, "there's something more
here. I believe those pieces were put in to deceive whoever searched."
"Let me clear out a little more of the sand, Mas'r Harry."
He threw out a few more spadefuls, filling the spade each time with his
hands so as to throw out nothing more than sand; and then once more we
began to feel about.
"What's that, Tom?" I whispered hastily.