TRAPPED
The gaunt man who had crawled from the mine pit did not see them
crouching in the dense thicket. He stood facing them, however, a
revolver dangling carelessly at his belt. He was a grotesque, powerfully
built fellow amazingly agile, and he was wearing a ragged, red-wool
shirt and an open, tattered leather jacket.
As Jack and the rancher watched, Joe Hansart wheeled and trotted off
over the rocks in the general direction of the pass.
“We missed our chance to nab him,” Jack said, emerging.
“Yes, but he has my gun, and it’s probably loaded,” Warner replied. “If
he sees us he may shoot. The poor old fellow seems completely off his
rocker.”
“You know him?”
“Not very well, but he’s Joe Hansart.”
“Is he the prospector you mentioned at your ranch?”
“Yes. Years ago I saw him a few times.”
“Didn’t you tell us at the ranch that he had set out for this hollow and
vanished?”
“Yes,” the rancher answered. “So far as I know, Joe hasn’t been seen in
Elks Creek for years.”
“But how has he managed to live?”
Warner shrugged. “Who knows? Maybe he makes trips out, though not to
Elks Creek. Probably he stashes food for the winter. In the summer, a
man of his ingenuity could get along on very little.”
“But why would he stay here year after year?”
“Evidently he’s been seized with gold fever, Jack, and it has twisted
his brain.”
“You think he’s found Old Stony’s caches?”
“I suspect so, Jack. Perhaps he has even stumbled onto a rich vein in
that pit mine. Let’s find out.”
Making certain the old prospector had not doubled back on his trail, the
two dropped down into the hole.
The mine was a shallow one, bolstered with crudely cut timber. Water
dripped from above, making the floor slippery and slimy. Warner’s
flashlight came to rest on a box of dynamite.
“Watch it!” he advised sharply, as Jack would have investigated. “That
stuff’s old—and dangerous.”
A little farther on they came to a pile of mined ore. Warner picked up
one of the chunks of rock, studying the dull-looking metal under the
flashlight.
“This looks like rich stuff!” he exclaimed. “It’s hand sorted!”
“Then Stony was right!” Jack cried. “He did find a fortune, only to lose
it.”
“Hard to tell until the stuff is assayed, but this ore looks rich to me.
Almost pure gold, Jack.”
“And there’s a lot of it! Piles and piles! Old Joe Hansart must have
been mining it here for years.”
Warner went on to a second and third pile of ore, but his enthusiasm
began to die.
“What’s wrong?” Jack demanded, puzzled by the rancher’s change of
attitude. “Isn’t it gold, after all?”
“It’s gold, all right.”
“But not quality stuff?”
“Well, it’s hard to tell much just by looking at it, Jack. That first
pile of hand-sorted stuff was rich—no question about it. But this—”
Warner dropped a chunk of ore contemptuously.
“It’s worthless?”
“I wouldn’t say that. I’m no expert. It’s easy to see, though, that’s
it’s not the same rich ore as that first pile.”
“Even so, there’s a lot of it,” Jack said optimistically.
“Oh, that one pile might be worth thousands,” Craig Warner replied. “And
it’s available to anybody who hauls it out.”
“Why do you suppose Joe Hansart hasn’t done it?” Jack speculated.
“Two reasons probably: one, he hasn’t wanted anyone to know of his
discovery; two, ore is heavy.”
“You figure Hansart never filed a claim?”
“I doubt it, Jack. If he had, word would have swept this section of
country like a prairie fire. He’s probably panned enough pure gold from
the lake to keep him in supplies. Meanwhile, he has stayed on here
alone, enlarging the mine.”
A short distance further into the pit, they came to a tunnel opening
which had been half covered with debris. Pulling the brush aside, Warner
ran the beam of his light over the rough wall.
“This seems to be where Hansart has done his most recent work,” he
observed. “You can see the vein. But it’s thin—played out.”
“Then this is only another worthless mine?”
“I couldn’t pass judgment on such a brief inspection,” Warner returned.
“Besides, as I say, I’m not an expert.”
“But it doesn’t look too promising to you?”
“Frankly, it doesn’t, Jack. I don’t want to build up your hopes, only to
have them collapse.”
“Oh, I hadn’t figured on cashing in on this trip except in fun and
experience,” Jack rejoined cheerfully.
“There’s gold here,” Warner said soberly. “These days, though, it takes
capital—lots of it—to operate any mine profitably. Headless Hollow is
hard to get at. So to make it worth while, the vein would have to be
exceedingly rich.”
They went on to the end of the narrow tunnel.
“In my opinion the vein was better near the surface,” Craig Warner said,
as he and Jack turned back. “It’s one of those freak things. Old Stony
thought he had made a rich find. He must have found ore that would be
worth maybe twenty to fifty thousand dollars in the present market. But
the streak seemingly plays out.”
“Mightn’t it pick up again somewhere in the valley?” Jack suggested
hopefully.
“Yes. But if in all these years Joe Hansart hasn’t improved on this
site, I doubt there’s any bonanza here.”
“The lure of gold, though, has held him here.”
“True,” Warner agreed. “And there’s the tragedy of it. Poor Joe! I don’t
know what’s to be done about him. He’s dangerous in his present state of
mind, and it won’t be easy to help him.”
“He already regards me as Enemy No. 1,” Jack said with a rueful chuckle.
“My head still aches from that crack he gave me on the head.”
“Joe’s probably afraid we’re here to steal his gold.”
“I suppose so. He must have been the one who stole our food at the ghost
town. And he must be the one who put up that animal skeleton at the
entrance to the pass.”
“Except for Joe, this valley must have been uninhabited for years,”
Warner said thoughtfully. “Prospectors who drifted this way always got
into trouble—minor accidents, food disappearing.”
“Hansart must have been behind it all!”
“He certainly wasn’t suspected, Jack. But what we’ve seen today
convinces me—”
“No search ever was made for him?”
“None that I recall, Jack. You see, Joe was a queer one, even as a young
man. The lone-wolf type. He had no relatives anyone ever heard about.
When he’d vanish for a year or so at a time, no one thought anything of
it. Then finally the story grew that he’d disappeared on a prospecting
trip into this valley.”
“He must have lived in that wreck of a cabin we took over—the one built
by your father and Old Stony.”
“Yes,” Warner agreed. “I’d guess that gold ore we found at the mine
entrance—the good stuff—came from the original cache and poor old Joe
stored it in here.”
“Probably he keeps pretty close watch of this mine,” Jack remarked, a
note of uneasiness in his voice. “How long have we been down here,
anyhow?”
“Too long.”
“Let’s get out,” Jack urged, starting over the rough, uneven tunnel
floor.
Warner’s flashlight guided them to the main opening into the mine.
“It must still be pretty dark outside,” Jack remarked, mystified because
no daylight filtered down. “A fellow can’t see an inch ahead of his
face.”
He groped on up the rough steps in the rock. But where the exit to the
mine should have been, his hand encountered first a mass of brush, and
then solid rock.
“Something’s wrong!” he muttered. “This can’t be the way we came.”
“Sure, it is,” Warner insisted, pressing close behind him. “This mine is
a simple affair. No offshoots. Here, let me have a look.”
His light beam swept the mine exit.
Both the rancher and Jack drew in their breath sharply.
The opening through which they had entered a few minutes before was now
blocked. They were trapped in the mine!