For the boulder was sweeping all before it. Dust rose in a cloud, and through that cloud, limbs of trees, brush, smaller stones, and other debris could be seen whirling.

Chet paid little attention to it, however, as he was above the gully and was out of the course of the slide. But he doubted if the Indian lad could easily escape, and he sent the coils of his lariat whirling down into the hollow.

“Catch hold and I’ll haul you up!” yelled the white boy.

The Indian could not possibly have heard him. By this time the roar of the landslide drowned all other sounds. The red youth, however, understood.

He had already started to scramble up the high wall of the gully; but the climb was steep and difficult. He seized upon the rope and Chet Havens leaped down from his saddle.

Chet was a strong boy, despite his slender figure. He pulled in the rope, hand over hand, and swung the Indian youth, kicking now and then at the rocks, above and clear of the descending avalanche.

Dig spurred his horse over to the place and leaped down to give his chum a helping hand.

“By the last hoptoad that was chased out of Ireland!” he ejaculated. “That redskin sure had a close shave, Chet! What d’you know about it, old man? Whew!”

Chet gave his hand to John Peep and helped him up to their level. The Indian youth was breathless; but his countenance displayed no fear. He gazed down the gulch after the roaring landslide, and shook his head.

“Much danger in that,” he grunted.

“You bet your life!” exclaimed the slangy Digby. “You were never nearer the Happy Hunting Grounds in your life.”

John Peep turned sharply on Digby. “You think it is funny to talk that way to me because I am an Indian,” he said. “I do not believe in any Happy Hunting Grounds any more than you white boys believe you go to a Big Candy-Shop when you die. That is silly.”

“Oh! Ugh!” gasped Dig, surprised. “All right. Needn’t get mad over it, old man.”

With a gravity that seemed quite beyond his years, John Peep turned to Chet. He had not changed colour in the least, nor was he disturbed by his perilous adventure in any way.

There were not many Indians about Silver Run; and those who were there were, as a rule, miserable creatures. Even this youth’s own family were hopeless, lazy and dirty in the extreme, prone to the use of “white man’s firewater” when they could get it.

But John Peep was more like what an Indian should be—or so Chet Havens thought. He was odd; but the white boy liked him, and when John put out his hand Chet accepted it and shook it warmly.

“You saved me. I will not forget. Thanks!” said the Indian lad.

“Don’t say anything more about it,” Chet said quickly. “You’d have done as much for me.”

John Peep looked at him curiously for a moment. Digby, getting impatient, blurted out:

“Well! are we going to stay here all day? We might as well get back to the Silent Sue.”

“You knew the shaft up there was caved in,” Chet said to the Indian. “How did it happen? I wanted dreadfully to go down. I believe we could reach my father and the other men entombed in the Silent Sue through the old tunnel from the Crayton shaft.”

“Can’t they be dug out through your shaft?” asked the Indian.

“I’m afraid it will take a week,” said Chet huskily.

“Oh, come on, Chet!” exclaimed Dig sympathetically. “Maybe some other way will turn up.”

“White boy know any other way?” queried John Peep quickly.

“No; of course he doesn’t,” cried Chet. “We’re at our wits’ end. There is an awful mass of stuff fallen into the Silent Sue shaft. As much as has fallen into this old shaft up yonder,” and he pointed up the hill.

The Indian lad seemed to hesitate; but finally he turned and spoke directly to Chet again.

“You come. Tie horses there,” pointing to the woods. “I show you something. Be quick.”

He started off abruptly, going toward the forest. Of course, he could not travel very fast because of his lameness. Chet and Dig looked at each other in both surprise and doubt.

“What does he mean, d’you s’pose?” whispered Dig.

“I don’t know. But it won’t hurt to humour him,” returned his chum.

To tell the truth, Chet Havens felt hope suddenly aflame in his heart; yet why, he could not tell.

CHAPTER V—THE BEARS’ DEN

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.”

CHAPTER VI—IN THE OLD TUNNEL

The lame Indian youth had no idea of giving up the leadership of the expedition. He grunted, and pushed Chet’s hand away when the white boy reached to take the rudely-made lantern by its bail.

“Me go first,” he said with confidence, and immediately swung himself over the edge of the rock.

In spite of his crippled leg, John Peep went down the rough rocks quickly, clinging with one hand to the knotted rope, the bail of the lantern swung over his other arm.

“He must have been often down this shaft,” thought Chet to himself; but said nothing to Dig Fordham. He only wondered why the Indian had often descended this shaft into the heart of the mountain.

John Peep raised his face and spoke from the depths:

“Havens follow—’bout ten yards; then other white boy come ten yards further back. Rope plenty strong.”

“All right!” responded Chet cheerily. “We’re after you.”

“Whew!” whistled Digby. “If that rope should break we’d be after him with a vengeance!”

The descent of the shaft was no easy matter, as the two chums from Silver Run quickly learned. Three bearing their weight upon it made the rope jerk and wriggle like an excited snake. Both Chet and Dig were several times almost thrown from their footing on the rough rock.

“You’re rocking the boat, Chet; look out!” grumbled Dig. “I expect to make a dive over your head any moment. Ugh! that’s wriggly!”

“Hang on, old man!” called back Chet. “That’s the best I can tell you.”

The walls of the shaft, however, did make a natural stairway; and at a pinch one might have climbed down and up again without recourse to the knotted rope. However, the rope enabled the boys to swing from side to side of the shaft, as the footing seemed better.

John Peep’s lantern cast sufficient light upward for the chums to see where they stepped. Indeed, all the light from the candle flickered on the walls above the descending Indian; the bottom of the pit was in utter darkness.

It was a slow descent, as was natural, and the shaft was very deep. As they had climbed so much higher than the plateau where the Crayton shaft was sunk, naturally this pit must be much deeper if it reached the old tunnel in which the Crayton gold vein had petered out in the old gold-mining days.

It was gruesome, too. Even Dig Fordham seemed to have lost his voice at the top of the shaft. An occasional grunt from John Peep was all the vocal sound that was made by the three for some time.

The white boys’ leather-shod feet scraping the rocks was the principal sound, for the Indian’s tread in his moccasins was silent.

This continued until finally Dig could restrain himself no longer.

“By the last hoptoad that was chased out of Ireland! How long’s this going to keep up? Is that Indian going to keep climbing down this hole forever?”

“Hush, Dig!” commanded Chet.

“I did not make the place,” said John Peep, with scorn. “White boy scared—he’d better have stayed out. Havens come. He not scared.”

“I’m not scared!” yelled Dig, his voice booming in the shaft. “By the last hoptoad—”

“And that’s silly,” interrupted John Peep quickly. “There is a legend to the effect that St. Patrick drove all the reptilian species out of Ireland; but it is doubtful if the eviction included the so-called common, or garden, toad.”

“Whew!” gasped Dig. “Did you hear that, Chet?”

His chum was chuckling and did not answer. Dig tried to treat John Peep as though he were an uneducated “blanket Indian,” as the uncultivated redmen were called. But John Peep had been some years at school and was notably the brightest scholar in his class.

Why he had taken to the woods and preferred to live in the wilderness, now that vacation had begun, Chet could only surmise.

It was just then that the Indian reached the bottom of the shaft. Or, rather, he reached the place where a hole was broken through the wall into the tunnel from the Crayton shaft.

Here a circular cavern had been hollowed out in past ages by the falling water; the subterranean stream finding an outlet at one side, where another pit dropped away into the heart of the mountain to an unknown depth.

The circular cavern was a most beautiful place, crystal stalactites hanging from its arched roof, while pointed stalagmites were strewn over the floor.

It had been, however, many, many years since there had been a particle of moisture in this cavern. There was a good current of air, and it was dry.

All this the white boys discovered when they reached the end of the rope and stood beside the Indian, Chet turned almost immediately to the cavity into the mining tunnel. It had been recently dug, without a doubt, for there were bright scales of quartz rock lying about and a pile of freshly excavated earth.

“Whew!” muttered Dig in Chet’s ear. “I’d really like to know who did this, wouldn’t you?”

“It wasn’t my father, I’ll be bound,” responded Chet, in the same tone. “There must be somebody interested in the old Crayton diggings besides him. Hush!”

John Peep came back to them. He brought a pick and shovel from some hiding place in the darker end of the cavern. To all appearances they were new implements.

“White boys want to dig into other mine,” he said briefly. “You come. I show.”

“Heap good,” grunted Dig, with a grin.

But the Indian paid him no attention, merely handing him the shovel, while he gave the pickaxe to Chet. Then he stooped to crawl into the newly-excavated passage.

Dig looked at Chet and scratched his head.

“What gets my goat,” he muttered, “is how that redskin talks one minute like a college professor and the next like Poor Lo with his face painted and a dirty blanket trailing at his heels. What do you think of him, anyway?”

“I think he has saved the lives of father and the men with him,” replied Chet earnestly. “Come on, Dig! We’re going to get them out.”

Only a thin shell of earth and rock separated the bottom of the shaft down which the trio had come from the old mining tunnel. Whoever had burst the wall through must have known just where the tunnel lay and must have been aware of its nearness to the ancient watercourse.

The loose earth was dropping in this short passage; but the drift from the Crayton shaft was well timbered with hewn oak. A single wide plank had been knocked out of the shoring to make an entrance into the tunnel.

Down here in the heart of the mountain the planking had neither rotted nor become dry and punky. The timbers all seemed just as good as when the miners had put them in.

“Come on, Dig!” repeated Chet, hurrying along the tunnel. “We can’t get them out any too quickly.”

“Where are you going to dig?” queried his chum.

“Right at the end, of course. Father said he thought the Number Two tunnel of the Silent Sue passed by the end of this drift.”

John Peep said nothing, but held the lantern and let Chet and Dig take the lead. They came to the end of the old passage after walking some distance. Here some recent excavating had undoubtedly been done. There was no rubbish in the way and they could attack at once the end wall.

The roof of the tunnel was a great slab of rock. The old method of “timbering in square sets” had been used in the Crayton claim, and the square cribs, filled with waste rock, upheld the roof of these workings.

What puzzled Chet was the identity of the person who had been so recently working at the end of this abandoned tunnel.

“What was he working here for?” demanded Dig. “There’s no sign of silver that I can see.”

Both boys thought that they knew a good deal about pay ore, both gold and silver. They were so much about their fathers’ mine, and had heard so much miners’ talk, and had seen so many specimens of ore, that they felt they were not to be easily fooled.

John Peep had nothing to say and the expression on his face did not invite questions.

Chet and Digby threw off their coats and set to work. Chet first swung the pick, while Dig shovelled the earth away. In five minutes Chet’s pick rang on a rock in the wall.

“Hello!” exclaimed his chum. “Did you hear that?”

“I hit a rock.”

“And somebody hallooed,” declared his chum, with confidence.

“Was it a voice? Do you think so?” cried the excited Chet. “So soon?”

“I bet you!” was the answer.

Chet attacked the wall with renewed courage. The earth and small stones rattled down faster than Dig could shovel the rubbish aside.

“Hold on! hold on!” gasped Dig. “Let’s take a breath. You’ll bury us both in this stuff, Chet. Wait till I shout again.”

“Go ahead!” panted his chum, quite breathless.

Digby raised his voice as loudly as possible. Immediately there was an answer—unmistakably a human voice!

“They’re in there—and they are alive!” cried Chet, half sobbing. “Come on, Dig! maybe some of them are hurt! I want to hear my father’s voice!”

CHAPTER VII—THE RESCUE—AND AFTERWARD

The two boys went at the task of digging into the other mine with renewed vigour. A murmur of sound came through the intervening wall of earth—unmistakably the voices of the entombed miners.

“Hurrah!” cheered Digby Fordham. “They hear us!”

Chet’s heart was too full for him to speak. He worked at the wall of dirt and small stones furiously, and without regard to the bringing down of a possible avalanche upon his own and Digby’s heads.

John Peep stood back and held the lantern so that they could see. He did not say a word after the chums began this second attack upon the wall.

Again the muffled shouts were heard. The chums replied—screaming at the very tops of their voices. A mass of earth fell inward.

“They are digging too! Keep it up, Chet,” called out his chum.

“I’m—getting—wind—ed!” gasped Chet.

“Let me take hold there!” cried the sturdy Dig. “You take the shovel.”

They exchanged implements, and the furious excavating went on for several minutes. They were making a round hole about breast high in the wall of the tunnel. The noise of their own pick and shovel drowned other sounds. Suddenly the pickaxe in Dig’s hands clashed with another iron implement wielded by somebody on the other side of the wall!

“Hurrah!” cried Dig Fordham. “We’ve found ’em, Chet!”

Another mass of earth fell in and the boys saw a light twinkling ahead of them.

“Is that you, Father?” called Chet Havens.

“Is that you, my boy? Well, well!” exclaimed the jolly voice of Mr. Havens, and it was filled with pride. “It didn’t take you two boys long to find us, did it?”

“And John Peep, the Cheyenne,” returned Chet. “He did more than we.”

But when he turned to look at the Indian youth, he was not there. With his lantern he had stolen away the moment he saw through the broken wall that the entombed miners had lamps.

“We have been trying to hit that old tunnel you are in, boys, for hours,” pursued Mr. Havens, as the men broke down the barrier between the two mines, and swiftly cleared the earth and rock away. “We knew we could escape through the Crayton shaft if once we could hit the old drift.”

“But you couldn’t, Father!” exclaimed Chet eagerly.

“Why not, Son?” demanded the gentleman, who still remained back in the darkness while his men worked.

“Because the shaft is caved in.”

“What’s that?” queried Mr. Havens quickly, and with some anxiety in his tone. “It was all right a week ago, for I saw it.”

“Somebody has pried out some of the timbering and caused a cave-in. It’s as bad as the one in our shaft, Father.”

“Well! I declare!”

“Say! I bet that lame Indian knows who did it,” growled Dig, resting on his pick. “But he won’t tell.”

“Then how, for mercy’s sake, did you get down here, will you tell me?” cried Mr. Havens, much astonished.

“Through an old bears’ den that John Peep showed us.”

“John Peep? That young Indian lad that went to school with you, Chetwood, and was so clever at his books?”

“Yes, sir. He was with us until just a minute or two ago. Now he’s gone away—so as not to be thanked, I suppose. He’s a good fellow,” declared Chet confidently.

“He surely is a good fellow if he showed you how to get down here to our rescue,” agreed Mr. Havens. “But I must look into this strange cave-in of the Crayton shaft. It’s a most mysterious thing. People don’t go around closing old mines for nothing; unless it’s mischievous boys.”

“’Twasn’t me!” denied Dig emphatically.

“You’re not the only mischievous young scamp there is in Silver Run,” chuckled Mr. Havens. “Well, boys—how is it? Can we crawl through?”

“You come along and try it, Boss. Easy on that foot, now!” said one of the miners solicitously.

“Oh, Father! are you hurt?” cried Chet, in sudden anxiety.

“Not so much but I shall get over it,” replied Mr. Havens, hobbling through the aperture between the two mines. “Now, Jackson, you’re in charge of the work on this drift. Just as soon as you can get to it from our end, build a bulkhead of heavy timbering across this hole. We don’t want any connection between the two mines.”

“All right, sir,” agreed the man spoken to, and who followed Mr. Havens first into the old Crayton mine.

“Oh, Father!” exclaimed Chet again, seeing that Mr. Havens’ right foot was bandaged, and that his boot had been cut away; “are you sure you are not badly hurt?”

“There may be a small bone or two broken,” his father said; “but that’s all. I reckon I’ll be on a crutch for a while. I won’t be able to ride at all for some weeks. And that is going to be unhandy,” he added, “for I’ve got an errand at Grub Stake—and a mighty important errand, too.”

Chet made no comment upon this last statement, for he knew his father had spoken to himself rather than to anybody else. It appeared that Mr. Havens had been hurt at the time of the blast.

“And it was that Tony Traddles’ fault,” declared one of the men. “He just naturally lied about that timbering being all right. She shook right down when the shot went off, and the boss got the end of a beam on his foot.”

“Tony’d ought to be thrashed!” exclaimed another of the miners.

“He’ll lose his job, and that right suddenly,” declared Mr. Havens. “I won’t trust a man like him around the Silent Sue.”

The miners had several lamps and it was easy now to find the small hole into the circular cavern at the bottom of the shaft. Here the light sparkled beautifully upon the pendants from the cavern roof, and showed as well the knotted rope hanging from the beam laid across the mouth of the shaft.

“Looks as if it was going to be a tug getting you up that hole, Boss,” said Jackson. “We’d better go up first and then raise you in a sling.”

“I’ve got a good rope for that,” cried Chet. “You’ll find it right at the top of that shaft—unless it’s been removed since Dig and I came down.”

“We’ll rig up something to help him, never fear,” declared Jackson, who was the first to climb the shaft with the aid of the knotted rope. He carried a miner’s lamp with him, and the boys and Mr. Havens sat down and watched the spark of the lamp as it wavered back and forth up the shaft.

The other four men started in succession after the mine boss. Mr. Havens questioned the boys regarding their adventures since the accident at the Silent Sue shaft. He was much interested in the condition of the Crayton shaft, and in the Indian boy’s knowledge of this new entrance into the old gold diggings.

“Beats me!” was his puzzled comment. Then he continued:

“I want to get to Grub Stake in a hurry, and here I am laid up with a lame leg. It’s important for me to see old John Morrisy, who was one of the original owners of this Crayton mine. He has agreed to sell me his share, and I need it to get control of the mine. Why I want control is a secret.

“Now, it looks to me,” pursued Mr. Havens thoughtfully, “as though somebody else was anxious to get the Crayton mine—or to stop me from getting it. I don’t know which.

“I don’t care so much about the old shaft’s being closed. Maybe that is a good thing, all things considered. But I must get the deeds to John Morrisy and have him put his mark on them before a Justice of the Peace. This lame foot is going to trouble me a whole lot—

“Hi! there’s Jackson hallooing. Ay, ay! we hear you,” answered Mr. Havens, and scrambled to his feet again.

A noose was let down from a ledge some distance up the shaft, and into this Mr. Havens placed his uninjured foot. The men above raised him to the shelf, and then they climbed up to another wide footing and swung Mr. Havens up to their level, this being repeated until he was finally raised to the top of the shaft.

Behind him Chet and Dig climbed, and they were all finally in the bears’ den. They found no sign of John Peep either in the den or after they came out upon the mountainside.

“It certainly is good to be out of that mine, boys!” declared Mr. Havens. “We’ll surprise old Rafe and Mr. Fordham, I surmise, when we arrive at the Silent Sue.”

“We’ll surprise Tony Traddles,” growled Jackson. “I’d like to get my paws on to him.”

“You leave him to me,” Mr. Havens advised him. “Now, Chet, you say you’ve a horse near. Maybe you can boost me on to him, and we’ll go over to the Silent Sue. Let me lean on your shoulder, boy.”

Chet did as he was told, and as he walked beside his father down the mountainside he added some details about John Peep and the mystery of the caved-in Crayton shaft. He also told Mr. Havens of seeing the strange white man with the Indian youth as he and Dig rode over from the Silent Sue.

“Who did he look like?” queried Mr. Havens.

“Nobody I ever saw around here before,” Chet replied.

“Well, it’s a puzzle,” muttered his father. “And somehow those papers have got to be carried to John Morrisy. The old man’s funny. Something might happen to him. I shan’t feel safe till our contract is fulfilled.”

Chet knew that his father was not speaking directly to him; so he remained silent. But he kept up a tremendous thinking. He wanted to get his chum off to one side and talk over a most wondrous idea that had come to him.

They found the two horses safely tethered where Dig had left them, and Mr. Havens was helped into the saddle of the bay horse without much difficulty. Hero was willing to walk if so commanded, therefore Chet’s father could ride without being badly shaken. His injured foot gave him great pain; yet he insisted upon going around by his mine before descending the mountain to Silver Run.

The other men who had been shut in the mine tramped on ahead, and as the boys led their horses they did not catch up with the five miners on their way to the mine. Besides they were delayed.

As they approached the clearing in which John Peep had first appeared to Chet and Digby, the trio smelled smoke.

“Maybe we’ll find the Indian here,” suggested Dig. “Whew! I hope he has supper ready. I’m starved right now, if any one should ask you.”

“That’s more than a campfire!” exclaimed Chet suddenly. “Hear the flames crackling?”

“I hope the fellow hasn’t set the woods afire. Indians are so careless,” said Mr. Havens.

“Oh! I’m sure John isn’t that kind of an Indian,” said Chet.

They came in sight of the abandoned mining camp the next moment. The interior of the sheet-iron shack which the Indian youth had occupied was afire.

Smoke and yellow flames poured from the door of the shack. It was evident that the boy’s outfit was being destroyed.

Dig tossed Poke’s reins to Chet to hold and ran over to the burning structure. The sides of the shack were red-hot, and he could not get near to it; but with a long pole he managed to poke something out of the fire.

“Hi!” he yelled, trying to hold this object up by its bail. “Nobody home but the beans—and they’re canned! Heap big Injun live on white man’s grub just the same!”

“Stop, Dig!” commanded Chet. “Suppose John should hear you? And he did us a mighty big favour.”

“Oh, he isn’t around,” declared Dig. “Think he’d let his outfit burn up like this?”

“Who did burn it?” asked Mr. Havens. “Looks odd to me. Of course the Indian boy wouldn’t destroy his own property.”

“I wonder where John went to when he left us so suddenly in that mine,” Chet remarked.

“He flew the coop, and that’s a fact!” said Dig. “But I couldn’t guess where he went to. It’s pretty safe to say he did not come this way.”

“That’s so,” agreed Chet. “But I would like to see him; wouldn’t you, Father?”

“Most certainly,” said Mr. Havens. “Perhaps we might do something to help the lad. If he has lost his outfit—”

“That white man!” exclaimed Chet, interrupting.

“Hel-lo!” said Mr. Havens.

“What white man?” asked Dig, in surprise. “What are you dreaming about, Chet?”

“No dream,” said Chet, shaking his head. “But we saw a stranger talking with John Peep right here; you remember, Dig?”

“Sure. What of it?”

“Maybe he was the fellow who caved in the Crayton shaft. And maybe he didn’t want anybody to know about that old bears’ den entrance to the mine. See?”

“Just as clear as mud,” grunted Digby, shaking his head, while Mr. Havens chuckled.

“Maybe you think it’s far-fetched, Father,” Chet urged earnestly. “But perhaps because the Indian showed us the way to get you and the boys out, that white man came back here and burned his stuff.”

“That’s a good deal of villainy,” said his father, ruffling the boy’s hair with a kindly hand. “You’ve a great imagination, Chetwood.”

So Chet felt rather abashed and said nothing further about the mystery as they went on toward the Silent Sue. He was convinced, however, that John Peep had got into trouble because of the help he had given them.

It was evident as they progressed that Mr. Havens was experiencing considerable pain from his bruised foot; yet he was troubled more because of his inability to get to Grub Stake than because of the injury itself. Chet wanted to say something right then; but he scarcely dared.

They came to the Silent Sue shaft at length. The five men running ahead had announced the joyful rescue, and the crowd that was gathered around the shaft welcomed Mr. Havens and the boys with loud cheers. A man started immediately for the town to inform Mrs. Havens of the rescue.

One man stood apart from the others. His face was ugly and morose of expression. He was a bewhiskered man. His beard had once been red, but was faded and tobacco stained.

His arms were so long that when he stood with his shoulders sagged a little, as they were habitually, his great, ham-like hands hung to his knees. His face and arms were tanned to the colour of old leather, the skin looking quite as tough.

Altogether, Tony Traddles was not a pleasant person to look at. Now he was particularly offensive in appearance. He was alone while the crowd of miners and their wives were congratulating each other upon the escape of the entombed men from the mine.

Tony Traddles looked as though he would not have cared if Mr. Havens and the other five men had stayed down in the shaft forever.

CHAPTER VIII—CHET SHOOTS A HAWK

Mr. Fordham had run forward to meet his partner and shake him by the hand.

“I’m mighty glad to see you, Jim!” he said, assisting Chet’s father to the ground. “The boys say you’ve hurt your foot. Is it bad?”

“Bad enough,” answered Mr. Havens, with much disgust, and standing like a stork on one leg until they brought him a stool to sit upon. “It’s going to keep me from going over to Grub Stake, Fordham, as I had planned.”

“Well, well! I’m glad you’re out of that hole. That’s enough to be joyful over. We’ll worry about the other thing later. What about that scamp yonder?” and Mr. Fordham swung about to point at the ugly, gorilla-like man who stood at one side, sucking on the stem of an old pipe.

“Tony Traddles? Let him go—and let him go quick, Fordham,” replied Mr. Havens earnestly, with a glance around at the rough men.

“I was tempted to have him jailed. A constable was up here,” said Mr. Fordham.

“No use. We couldn’t prove anything more than malicious mischief—and we’d have hard work to do that, I think. But it’s only by the mercy of Heaven that he hasn’t the lives of six men upon his conscience.”

“Ha!” snapped Dig’s father. “That fellow has no conscience.” Then he raised his voice: “Come here, you Tony!”

The ugly-looking man shuffled over to his employers. He looked sheepish as well as ugly, and still pulled furiously at his old pipe.

“Well, Tony, you played us a bad trick that time,” said Mr. Havens quietly. “You knew when I asked you if the timbering was secure that you had not wedged your cross-beams. Your neglect came near costing six lives. We cannot have you work on the Silent Sue any longer. Mr. Fordham will give you your time and money, and you can go.”

“I dunno what I done,” growled Tony, in a much injured tone. “I couldn’t help the shaft caving in.”

“You know it wouldn’t have caved if you had done your work properly,” said Mr. Fordham sharply.

“I could have forgiven you for that,” Mr. Havens hastened to say. “But your falsehood led us to suppose that it was safe to fire the shot. That is your crime, Tony—the misstatement of fact.”

“Aw, yer both down on me,” growled Tony Traddles. “I might as well take my time and beat it.”

“You might just as well, I think,” said Dig’s father grimly. “Here’s your money. Count it. Sign here in the book. Now be off—for your own good; for let me tell you the men who worked with you don’t feel very kindly toward you.”

“Aw, let ’em blow! I ain’t afraid of ’em,” growled Tony Traddles.

The boys had been watching Tony and the mine owners, but from such a distance that they could not hear the conversation. They heard the men talking, however—the men who had been thrown out of work for several days because of Tony’s carelessness.

Chet, after listening to several threats, looked about for Dig. The latter had gone to Rafe Peters’ shack for a sandwich. Young Fordham had already expressed himself as being “half starved.” He was not used to going without his dinner.

“Hi, Dig!” shouted Chet, beckoning to his chum.

“Now, don’t ask for the core,” mumbled Dig, with his mouth full. “There ain’t going to be no core. Ask Rafe for a hand-out yourself.”

“Don’t think everybody is as greedy as you are,” said Chet. “Come on here. I believe there is going to be trouble.”

He said the last in a low voice after his chum had reached his side.

“What d’you mean—trouble?” queried Dig.

“The men are dreadfully sore on Tony Traddles.”

“And why shouldn’t they be?” demanded Digby. “He’d ought to be tarred and feathered.”

“Sh! Some of them might hear you.”

“And I should worry about that!” cried Dig slangily.

“There’s something going to happen to Tony, I do believe,” whispered Chet. “You see, your father’s paid him. Now he’s going up the hill. And a bunch of the men hurried over behind that hill a few minutes ago.”

“Whew!” exclaimed Dig. “Maybe—maybe they’re going to lynch him!”

“Don’t talk so foolishly!” cried Chet. “These miners aren’t murderers, I should hope! Why—there’s Bob Fane, and Jeffers, and Ike Pilsbury. Why, we know most all of them! They’re decent men and wouldn’t kill even Tony.”

Dig chuckled. “Guess you think he deserves it, whatever they do to him?” he suggested.

“Come on! Father and your father are busy. I want to see if they do get Tony Traddles,” Chet said eagerly, and set off for the grove of trees directly above the mouth of the mine that had been caved in because of Tony Traddles’ negligence.

The men had melted away from about the shaft. Even Rafe Peters, the foreman, had disappeared. Mr. Havens and Mr. Fordham were busy at the corrugated iron shack that served as an office. The women and children had taken their recovered husbands and fathers home; it was only the younger and more irresponsible element of the Silent Sue workmen that had gone over the hill.

And in their tracks sped the two chums. Chet and Dig were both eager and curious. They saw the bewhiskered and long-armed Tony Traddles staggering along the rough trail over the hill, occasionally turning to shake his hairy fist in the direction of the mine. He was probably muttering threats, too, against the mine and its owners.

The boys had taken a shorter path over the rise; besides, they were running. But the miners who had been associated with Tony had got over the hill first. They were hidden in the chaparral on the edge of the trail Tony was following, and when he came down the slope they sprang out and surrounded him.

Chet and Digby could not hear what was said at first; but Tony began to show fight almost at once. He was no coward.

The miners rushed in on him, tied his wrists together, and amid a great deal of noise and some laughter, hoisted him upon a fence-rail which four of them carried on their shoulders. His ankles were then triced together. His helplessness made him ridiculous.

“Oh, bully!” cried Dig, in delight. “That serves him right!”

“I wish they hadn’t done it,” said Chet. “They’re going to ride him over the mountain.”

“Sure they are! And they are going to warn him not to come back,” said Dig. “Serves him just right, I tell you.”

“But suppose he does something to get square?” breathed Chet, much excited as well as anxious.

“Pooh! what could he do?” returned Dig. “He may as well go out and hunt for that big buffalo he was telling us about. I don’t believe Tony Traddles would know a buffalo if he met one in his soup.”

“What a ridiculous thing, Dig,” said Chet. “And you needn’t scorn the fact of the existence of the buffaloes. Rafe told us about them, too. And maybe we’ll get a shot at them.”

“How?” demanded Digby, fired by the thought.

But at that instant something happened to the miner who was being ridden on a rail, which attracted their attention again.

“Hi! see that somersault!” cried Dig.

“Oh, dear me!” Chet exclaimed. “That was enough to break his neck.”

“And serve him just right!” quoth the savage Dig.

Tony Traddles, in struggling to free himself, and while raised on the shoulders of the men, had turned completely over and now hung head-down, his long hair brushing the uneven ground over which he was being carried.

The rough men laughed and cheered; nor did they offer at first to help the discharged miner. Tony struggled and fought and finally was helped to a sitting posture again.

The boys were too far away to hear all the prisoner said—and that was fortunate. But now they ran forward and, above the cheers and laughter of the gang, heard Tony Traddles mouth out his threats:

“I’ll git square with you all! I’ll make ye all eat dirt fur this day’s work! Mark me, I’ll do fur ye all yet!”

The men hooted and laughed at him, and Tony’s rage grew.

“I’ll make ye all sing another tune. An’ I’ll git square with old Havens. Mark what I say now! I’ll git square.”

The rough men went on with their prisoner, tossing the rail up and down and making his seat as uncomfortable as possible. Chet stopped in the trail and halted Digby by clinging to his coat-sleeve.

“Let’s go back,” he said. “I wish the men hadn’t angered Tony so. Perhaps he will do my father some harm.”

“A fat chance he’d have of doing that!” exclaimed the other boy. “He’ll never dare come back here again. You tell your father. He’ll be on the lookout for Tony.”

“No, no! He’s got enough to worry him. I wouldn’t say anything now that would disturb his mind. And say, Dig, that reminds me! Let’s try and get ’em to let us go to Grub Stake.”

“Huh? To Grub Stake?” cried Digby, in surprise. “What for? Though I’d go quick enough if it were only to buy a lemon.”

“There’s a bigger reason than that,” laughed Chet Havens. “Didn’t you hear my father say something about getting some papers signed by a man named Morrisy who lives at Grub Stake?”

“Yes, I remember.”

“Well, it’s important. Father can’t go because his foot’s hurt. Let’s tease to go. And on the trail we might run across that big buffalo.”

“By the last hoptoad that was chased out of Ireland!” ejaculated the excited Dig, falling back upon his favourite exclamation, “that would be great. But you do the askin’, Chet. My father will think I’ve got something up my sleeve if I undertake even to hint at such a trip.”

Chet agreed to this; but it was not a propitious moment to broach the subject when the chums returned to the shaft of the Silent Sue. Mr. Havens had just been helped upon Chet’s horse again, and was going home. He expected to remain at home for some weeks, and the business of the Silent Sue was to be under Mr. Fordham’s sole direction.

The partners in the mine knew nothing about the trouble Tony Traddles had gotten into with the rougher element of the miners. Nor did the boys say anything about what they had seen.

The next morning Digby was over bright and early at the Havens house to see if Chet had spoken to his father regarding the Grub Stake trip. He found his chum in the lot beside the corral, where his mother had a flock of hens, with his small, twenty-two calibre rifle. It was the little weapon Chet had learned to shoot with.

“What are you doin’ with that little play gun?” chuckled Digby. “Shootin’ horseflies?”

“Just you keep still a minute,” whispered Chet, who was crouching behind a shed wall. “Stoop down here. Keep still. I’m watching a hawk.”

“You can’t shoot even a chicken hawk with that thing!” exclaimed Dig, scorning a weapon of small calibre.

“You wait and see,” commanded Chet. “There he comes now!”

Far off against the sky appeared a dark spot, circling ever lower and lower. The great hawk swept down in narrowing circles, its objective point plainly being Mrs. Havens’ hen-run.

“Why don’t you get a gun?” growled Dig, for although he well knew Chet’s skill with firearms, he thought the tiny rifle a foolish thing.

Just then a voice behind the boys put in a word:

“I reckon your friend is going to wait for the hawk to drop on the chicken before he shoots. ’Twon’t carry more’n ten feet, will it?”

Chet turned rather angrily. He did not mind his chum’s joking; but this stranger’s scornful remark angered him.

And he was a stranger. Chet thought he had never seen the man before. The fellow wore a big black sombrero, but was not in working clothes. His boots were polished, he wore a ruffled shirt and silk tie and cuffs.

His countenance was not pleasant, for his eyes were too sharp and too near together. He had his brown moustache curled and there was an odour of strong perfume about him, as though he had just been to the barber’s.

“You wait a couple of minutes,” Chet Havens said sharply, “and you’ll see how far this gun carries. Providing that hawk isn’t frightened away,” he added, glancing upward.

The stranger leaning on the fence immediately became very still. Dig began to grow nervous—for his friend’s sake.

“Say! let me run in and get you a proper gun, Chet,” he whispered. “I know you can kill that hawk up there; but not with that dinky little thing.”

“The first hawk I ever killed I brought down with this rifle,” muttered Chet. “And I bet I haven’t forgotten the trick— That way!”

As the hawk suddenly swooped, Chet stepped clear of the shed. He didn’t even bring the butt of the rifle to his shoulder, but fired from the hip.

There was a shriek from the bird, and with several feathers flying, the hawk sank fluttering to the ground. Digby Fordham uttered a cry of admiration.

“I declare!” exclaimed the stranger, as the boys ran across the lot to secure the still fluttering bird. “I never saw a prettier shot—and him only a kid!”

He was gone when Chet and Dig returned with the dead hawk between them, each carrying the bird by an outstretched pinion.

“You gave me the laugh, Chet!” declared Dig, with enthusiasm. “I didn’t think you could do it. Hello! where’s that fellow gone?”

The stranger had disappeared. Just then, however, Mr. Fordham rode down from the mine and the boys hurried out to show Chet’s prize and hear what news he had brought to Mr. Havens, who sat upon the front porch of the house with his wounded foot on a stool.

“Everything all right at the Silent Sue, Fordham?” Mr. Havens was asking. “I’m glad to know you’re on the job. But I’m worrying about that other matter.”

“About those deeds to the Crayton claim?” queried Mr. Fordham.

“Yes,” said his partner. “The doctor says I shall be laid up here for three weeks. A lot may happen before I can get hold of John Morrisy. If we had somebody to send—”

Dig had been prodding Chet eagerly, and whispering in his ear. The other boy dropped the hawk and drew nearer.

“Can’t Digby and I go to Grub Stake for you, Father?” he asked, timidly. “It’s vacation, we’ve got good horses and know how to shoot if we need to, and I’ve heard you say yourself the trail is plain. Can’t we go?”

Mr. Havens and Mr. Fordham looked at each other. To tell the truth, the gentlemen had discussed this very thing, only the boys did not know it.

“Your boy is all right,” drawled Mr. Fordham, “but mine is such a scatter-brained youngster—”

“Oh, Dad! I promise not to scatter my brains—nor let them be scattered—if you say I can go with Chet to Grub Stake,” cried Dig, utterly unable to keep silent another minute, so great was his eagerness.