The Trail Boys on the Plains; Or The Hunt for the Big Buffalo Read online

  CHAPTER III--THE LAME INDIAN

  The five men shut in the mine with Chet's father were all married andtheir wives and children made the noisiest group of all at the mouth ofthe Silent Sue mine. The rough men standing about tried to comfort them;but there was not much of a comforting nature to say.

  There were plenty of men for the work of rescue; indeed, there were somany in each two-hour shift that they got in each other's way. ChetHavens had put the situation concisely and to the point: It would takemore than a week to dig down to the opening of Number Two tunnel;meanwhile, how would the entombed miners live without food or water?

  Mr. Fordham had not returned and there was nobody for the two boys toconfer with. The mine foreman was doing all that seemed possible. It wasa question whether what he did was of much use.

  Six men in a stoppered tunnel, with no ventilation and nothing to eat ordrink, were not going to live long. Chet doubted if any of them would bealive at the week's end.

  "Wait till father comes," Dig said, almost sobbing, and seeing how badlyhis chum felt. "Perhaps he'll know some other way to get into thatdrift."

  "What way?" demanded Chet. "He doesn't know any more about the mine thanwe do."

  "Maybe from the old upper level--"

  "Bah! you know better," Chet said sharply. "The pay-streak they followedfirst in this mine is only fifty feet down. It petered out before yourfather and mine bought into the Silent Sue--you know that, Dig.

  "No chance! The two levels have never been connected, save by the shaftitself. Your father can't dig any faster than these men are digging. Ifthere were only a way--

  "Say, Dig! there's the Crayton Shaft. Don't you remember it? Father toldme the Number Two tunnel on the lower level was pretty close to the oldCrayton diggings. He always said that if the Crayton people had kept on,they'd have struck pay-ore again. But they got cold feet and fatherbought a share in the claim cheap. Now there's been a fellow aroundafter it. I heard father talking about it."

  "What good will it do to go down the Crayton shaft?" demanded Dighopelessly.

  "I don't know--I don't know," admitted Chet. "But I can't stand hereidle. I'll go crazy--_crazy!_ I must do something! Maybe the wallbetween the tunnel of the Crayton mine and our Number Two is not verythick. I've got a compass, and I know this hill like a book. So do you.Let's take a pick and shovel and ride over there."

  "Oh, Chet! I'm afraid you're stirring yourself all up over nothing,"returned his chum. "I'll help you, of course; but I'm afraid it won'thelp us any to go over there."

  "We'll not know till we try."

  "Will you take some of the men to help us?"

  "Two can do all that can be done," answered Chet, rather shrinking fromtaking even Rafe Peters into his confidence. It seemed such a forlornhope!

  "If the blast went off at the end of the tunnel, it'll be full ofrubbish and take a lot of digging to get through it."

  "No. Our tunnel isn't going head-on into the Crayton drift. I understoodfather to say that Number Two tunnel passed the old diggings by. Mygoodness! if he only remembers it, and knows just where the Craytontunnel is, maybe he and the boys will start digging that way at once.Come on, Dig! Let's ride over."

  Chet ran to the tool shed and seized a pick and shovel; the latter hetossed to his chum and then sprang astride Hero with the pick in hishand. This time his friend had no trouble in getting Poke, for he hadfastened that uneasy animal.

  There was so much excitement around the mouth of the shaft that nobodynoticed the two boys riding away into the woods trail. They knew the wayperfectly. Indeed, there were not many trails in the vicinity of SilverRun and the mountain that towered over it which were not familiar toChet Havens and Dig Fordham.

  This mountain had been deeply scarred by the miners of the old days. Oneside of the hill had been eaten away by the hydraulic mining which wascarried on when gold was first discovered here. How much of the richsilver ore, which the early prospectors did not recognise, had beenwasted in the first excitement of finding gold, will never be known.

  For this really was a hill of silver. The veins of ore streaked it likethe arteries in a human body. The Silent Sue claim chanced to containseemingly exhaustless veins; while the old Crayton mine soon peteredout.

  Once the wall of the forest had shut out the view of the shaftbuildings, the boys were likewise out of sight of all human habitations.The old trail was rough and in places washed away, or filled up withleaves or other litter.

  Now and again as they rode along they came to deep excavations in thehillside, old pits which had been abandoned almost as soon as dug. Therewas neither gold nor silver in these places, although the indications onthe surface had toled the early miners on to make the excavations.

  At first the prospectors had been after gold, and gold alone. The golddust was mixed with a black, rotten ore that the early miners did notrecognise as sulphuret of silver, which is nothing more than the puremetal in a decomposed state. The prospectors complained loudly of the"nuisance" of this black stuff. It was worse than the black sand foundalways in gold diggings, for such sand does not interfere with theamalgamation of the gold ore.

  This "black stuff" interfered with the mining of gold, and the diggingsgot a bad name because of it. It was some years after the cessation ofgold digging in the mountain above Silver Run (which was not then on themap) that the nature of this rotten silver ore began to be understood.The Comstock Lode had then excited world-wide attention, and men who hadbeen among those who had worked the claims on this mountain rememberedthat the same kind of ore that proved so rich in the Comstock claim hadbeen thrown aside and anathematised by the miners in these old diggings.

  So there was another "rush." Silver Run was established. In somerelocated claims the silver ore was seen to be almost inexhaustible, asin the Silent Sue, the mine owned by the fathers of Chet and Digby.

  Silver Run had become a town of some importance. There were otherindustries besides mining. It was a well governed town, and although onthe verge of the wilderness it had easy communication with cities in amore advanced state of civilisation.

  When the boys were about two miles from the Silent Sue mine, they cameupon one of the abandoned camps. There was little left to mark itsoccupancy by the prospectors of the old regime save several caved-inshafts and some rusted, corrugated-iron shacks.

  From the rusty stove-pipe chimney of one of these, smoke was curling,and Digby said:

  "I bet that's where the lame Indian hangs out. You know, he's oldScarface's grandson."

  "I know. John Peep. That's what the boys used to call him when he cameto school."

  "You don't want to call him that to his face," chuckled Dig. "It makeshim madder'n a hen on a hot skillet. He's got some fancy Indian namethat he prefers to be called by. Oh, he's a reg'lar blanket Indian--andScarface does odd jobs of cleaning out cellars and whitewashing!"

  "Poor fellow!" said Chet, scarcely giving his mind to the matter of theIndian youth. "It must be tough to limp around on a game leg. One'sshorter than the other. You don't often hear of a lame Indian."

  "No. Father says that in the old days if an Indian baby was borndeformed they got rid of it right away. And when Indians used to fightthey fought so hard that they usually killed each other. That's whythere were seldom cripples among them.

  "But this chap--Ah! there he is."

  A figure appeared at the open door of the shack. It was that of a tall,slim boy, very dark, with red under the skin on his cheekbones, andstraight, long black hair. His "scalp lock" was braided; the rest of thehair was well greased and hung to his shoulders.

  The shoulders of the Indian youth were bare. Indeed, he wore nothing atall in the way of a garment above his waist. Dig waved his hand to theIndian, and shouted:

  "Hello, John! You livin' up here all alone?"

  The Indian youth made no immediate reply, but walked out to the trail onwhich the boys were riding. Chet was impatient of delay, but Dig pulledin his horse. The lame boy st
epped between the chums and Chet lookedback, restraining Hero.

  "What are you boys doing up this way?" asked John.

  "We're in a hurry," said Chet quickly. "Going over to the Craytonshaft."

  "What for?"

  "Say! you're kind of nosey, I think," said Dig frankly. "What do youwant to know for?"

  But John Peep was looking at Chet and seemed to expect his answer tocome from that individual.

  "There's been an accident at the shaft of my father's mine," Chet said."There is a cave-in, and my father and five other men are shut down inthe mine. We're going to see if we can't get into the Silent Sue minefrom the old Crayton shaft. You know the Crayton shaft, John?"

  "I know," said the Indian boy, nodding. "You can't get down there."

  "Why can't we?" cried Dig explosively. "You don't know what you'retalking about!"

  "You can't get down there," repeated the lame Indian, but stepping outof the way when Dig urged Poke along the trail.

  "Why not?" asked Chet again.

  "You can't get down there," said the Indian for a third time, and thenhe turned and hobbled back toward the shack.

  "You can't get any sense out of _him_," grumbled Dig, in disgust. "He'sgot some bug in his head. Maybe he thinks this whole mountain belongs tohim because it used to belong to his tribe. Old Scarface told me thismountain was 'bad medicine' and nobody used to come here but the Indianmedicine men in the old days. You couldn't hire Scarface to come uphere."

  The two white boys were riding steadily on over the rough trail. Chetkept looking back at the abandoned camp, for he was puzzled. He wonderedwhat John Peep could have meant.

  "There!" he exclaimed suddenly. "See that?"

  "See what?" demanded his chum, twisting his neck in order to look behindhim.

  "There's a man with that fellow--a white man."

  "With the lame Indian?" queried Digby. "Why, so there is! Funny! Can'tbe one of the boys following us?"

  "Of course not. Nobody could follow us so fast on foot. There! They arestaring after us. I never saw that man before; did you?"

  "I don't remember. He's not a miner--or, he isn't in working togs. Giveit up, Chet."

  So did Chet. He had something much more important to think of. While themen at the shaft of the Silent Sue were endeavouring to hoist out therubbish that had fallen into the bottom of the shaft, the young chapbelieved there was a better chance to get into the lower tunnel of themine by following the old drift of the abandoned diggings.

  In half an hour the two lads reached the mouth of the Crayton shaft.Neither of the boys had been this way for a year.

  Something had happened since their last visit to the spot. The old logwindlass was overturned, and when they left their horses and ran to themouth of the shaft they saw that a part of the shoring had given way andhundreds of tons of earth and rock had fallen into the pit, completelychoking the way to the old mine.