by John Blaine
“I’m on the right-hand wall,” he told Scotty. I’ll return along the left-hand wall.”
“Good system,” Scotty approved.
It was, too. They passed each other in the dark and Rick was pleased, until he tripped on a rock and stumbled into the pile.
“We’re going to have to count paces,” he said ruefully as he nursed a bruised knee. “Say twenty paces up and twenty paces back.”
“Better make it twice that,” Scotty replied. “We can’t pile all the rocks in one place.
Well have to spread them out.”
“Forty it is,” Rick agreed, and found another rock.
The work went on, gradually assuming the proportions of a dream-or a nightmare. Pick up a rock, tote it forty paces,drop it. Then thirty-five paces as the passageway got cluttered. Now and then they had to join forces to lug a particularly big piece.
Rick’s watch showed him that two hours had gone by. “Let’s take a break,” he
suggested.
“Okay.”
Scotty turned on his light. They found their shirts, then went back to survey what they had accomplished.
One glance told them it wasn’t much. They had cleaned out the passage up to the main slide, and that was all.
They looked at each other in the flashlight’s glow.
“Got any earth-moving equipment in your pocket?” Rick asked wryly.
“Not a dragline or a clamshell,” Scotty said. “We certainly didn’t make much of a dent, did we?”
“At this rate we’ll be here until Christmas,” Rick said.
“Notthat well need a Christmas tree.”
“We could use the lights,” Rick commented. “Let’s keep plugging. I’m not so sure I need a rest after all.”
“Might as well.”
“Just sitting on the rocks will sap our strength, anyway,” Rick pointed out. “We might as well work while we’re still fresh. We can take five-minute breaks when we begin to tire.”
“I’m with you. Tote those rocks.”
“Let’s use one light, too. No point in just clearing the tunnel. We want to break through in as short a time as possible. If we use the light we can pull rocks from nearer the top of the slide.”
“Sensible as usual.I’ll prop my light so it shines on the slide.”
Scotty did so,then both boys shed their shirts once more.
The rock hauling went faster even with the rays of the single flashlight. They took turns climbing the slide and throwing rocks down. The boy taking a turn at the bottom moved them out of the way.
“Watch it!” Rick yelled suddenly, and jumped away from a slide of rock.Scotty, who was back in the tunnel disposing of a big rock, asked anxiously, “Are you hurt?”
“No. Hand me that light, will you?”
Scotty carried the light to where Rick waited. Rick took it and shone it upward to where the slide had come from. He whistled. There was solid ceiling, but it was a yard higher than the rest of the tunnel ceiling.
He calculated quickly. “If this is typical, we have rock three feet thick, ten feet wide, and twenty feet long piled up in front of us. That makes six hundred cubic feet of rock.”
“But it can’t be typical,” Scotty disagreed. “If three feet had fallen uniformly, it wouldn’t have filled the tunnel. It must be much thicker right over the broken timbers.”
“Not a very cheerful prospect, is it?” Rick had a vision of yards of rock ahead.
“I’ve seen happier prospects. But what can we do? Keep plugging is all, and hope it doesn’t take long for Dr. Miller to locate us.”
Rick looked at his watch.“No chance of that yet. It isn’t even suppertime. It may be morning before Dr. Miller gets really worried.”
Scotty chuckled grimly. “Our own reputation for being able to take care of ourselves is not helping us, either.”
“I’ll never go into a place without two entrances again,” Rick promised.
There was a moment’s shocked silence while the boys stared at each other. They spoke simultaneously.
“How do you know this has only one entrance?”
“How do we know this hasn’t two entrances?”
They had never reached the end of the mine. For all they knew, it might only be necessary to walk out.
“We’ll go see,” Rick stated.“Right now.”
“Didn’t we ever ask about another entrance?” Scotty demanded.
“No, now that I think of it, and no one ever said anything about it.”
“Maybe they never said anything because there isn’t anything to say.”
“No more assumptions,” Rick said. “We can find out for ourselves. Get your shirt on and let’s go.”
They quickly dressed and hiked down the long tunnel to the point they had reached when the cave-in occurred. Rick paid more attention to the formation than before, and found it was easy to trace the ore vein. Pockets in the walls showed where offshoots of the main ore vein had been located and dug out, but mostly the mine bored through the hill in one continuous tunnel.
“Funny they didn’t take more ore out of the top,” Scotty commented.“Looks like fairly decent stuff overhead and to the left.”
“Not good enough, I guess. Refining was pretty primitive in those days. Techniques are better now, but there probably isn’t enough good ore here to make new operations worth the expense of getting it out.”
“Look ahead,” Scotty said.
Rick had been examining the wall of the tunnel. He turned and looked to where Scotty pointed, and his heart sank. It was another rockslide.
“Funny,” Scotty commented. “The tunnel goes uphill to the slide.”
Rick saw that his pal was right. But the change in elevation of the tunnel didn’t seem important compared to the prospect that now faced them. They simply had to go back and resume their rock hauling. There was no way of knowing whether the tunnel
continued beyond the slide, or whether the slide itself was the reason the Civil War miners had gone no farther.
“I need a rest,” Rick said, discouraged. “Let’s sit down and take a breather before we start back.”
“Okay. Douse the light?”
“Might as well. Your battery’s getting low.”
Scotty switched the light off and they sat down on the hard rock floor. Rick closed his eyes and breathed deeply.Plenty of hard work ahead. He might as well rest while he
could.
Scotty spoke suddenly.“Plenty of good fresh air down here. Isn’t that a little odd?”
Rick stirred. “Is it? I hadn’t thought much about it. But I suppose the air ought to be stale and smelly.”
“Wet your finger.”
“Huh? Oh, okay.” It was the ancient trick of using the cooling caused by evaporation of moisture from a damp finger to show the movement of air currents. Rick let out an exclamation. The air in the tunnel was in motion!
Scotty said with suppressed excitement, “Close your eyes. I’m going to light a match.”
Rick did so, and saw the light even through closed eyelids because his pupils were fully dilated. He opened his eyes cautiously, squinting against the glare of the match. As the pupils contracted he saw that the paper match burned brightly, and that the flame flickered!
Scotty jumped to his feet, switching on the flashlight. “The breeze is coming from the slide!”
With one accord they rushed to the slide and began pulling rocks away. Clearly, the tunnel sloped upward at this point. The question was,did it emerge in a real opening, or only in a hole driven through for ventilation?
There was only one way to find out: move rock!
They sought for key rocks, those that would allow other rocks to tumble down and out of the way.
Rick thought it was at least to their credit that they learned from experience. Then, as he jumped frantically to escape a sliding boulder, he had to grin at his own thought. They had learned, but not enough.
There was no doubt aboutit, a current of air came thr
ough the slide. They could feel it, cool and fresh, and redoubled their efforts.
Finally they had to slow down from sheer exhaustion.
“Take a break,” Rick said huskily. “We’d be foolish to wear ourselves out.”
“You’re right.” Scotty slumped down where he was and wiped his face. “That air current is getting stronger. We’re making progress.”
“Wish I knew toward what,” Rick said.
“Air, anyway. And where there’s a source of air is also daylight.”
“I’d feel better if I could see some.”
They rested in silence for five minutes by Rick’s watch, then resumed, working as close to the top of the pile as they could get.
Scotty suddenly let out a yell, and Rick dodged to escape another rock,then leaped down as the whole pile crumbled. The rocks didn’t fall far.
“Look,” Scotty said breathlessly.
Rick turned on his own light to supplement the dim beam of Scotty’s. Blackness
yawned at the top of the slide!
Scotty was first through the hole, but Rick was right behind him. They emerged in a continuation of the tunnel, but on a higher level. Their lights showed that the tunnel continued.
They followed it for perhaps fifty feet, and found themselves in a cross tunnel in which their tunnel ended.
Scotty looked at Rick in the beam of the flashlight.
“We’re somewhere,” he said.“But where?”
Rick grinned. There was a definite breeze blowing, and he knew the outside and safety were not far away. “We’re in the mine, under the same old hill. Soon as we find the source of that breeze, I’ll identify our position within two feet.”
Scotty returned the grin. “What are we waiting for? Let’s go!”
CHAPTER XVIII
The First Fact
Rick said, “Hold it a minute. Which way do we go? If we assume the tunnel we came out of was fairly constant in direction, we should turn right to come out on the side of the hill where we saw the Frostola man a while ago. If we turn left, we go deeper into the hill.”
Both boys saw the implication the moment the words left Rick’s lips. “Right it is,” Rick added quickly. “First thing we have to do is see if there really is a way out.”
They turned right into the cross tunnel, and met the breeze head on. So long as they followed the direction of the breeze, they were approaching the outside air.
Within a hundred feet they saw a glimmer of daylight and broke into a run. The
glimmer became an opening, irregular in shape, but obviously big enough for an
entrance.
“We made it!” Rick exulted. “Let’s get a good look at that sunshine!”
“Careful,” Scotty cautioned. “We’ll have to let our eyes adjust fully or the glare will hurt. Besides, it may not be a good idea to go barging out into the open. Might be some ghosts hanging around.”
“You’re right. Anyway, let’s take a brief look. What’s blocking the opening?”
As they approached he saw that it was the trunk of a fallen tree, festooned with blackberry bushes. When they looked through the entrance, blinking in the light, they saw that the tree wasn’t really a block, because there was plenty of room to crawl out of the tunnel.
“That trunk makes a mighty good shield,” Scotty said thoughtfully. “Bet this entrance is invisible ten feet away, except from the air!”
“And I’ll add my own bet, that the entrance is very close to where we met the Frostola man this morning, and that he wonders if we spotted it from the plane.”
Scotty shook his head. “No betting on sure things. This explains the interest in the plane, all right. Stand by, old son. I’m going to make a quick recon and be sure the coast is clear.”
“Okay. Eyes adjusted?”
“Enough.” Scotty went through the entrance on hands and knees. Back saw his legs as he stood up and surveyed the scene.
“Come on out,” Scotty called. “We’re alone.”
Back joined him. The fallen tree trunk came above their knees. As Scotty had said, it made an effective shield for the mine entrance.
Rick studied the entrance itself. Probably it had once been a regular timbered entrance, like the one on the other side of the hill, but it had fallen in, the rocks wedging to form a low passage into the tunnel inside. The whole hillside was overgrown with brambles, down to the two-rut road below them, almost at the place where they had met the peddler.
“We were within fifty feet of this entrance,” Rick said, “and never suspected it.”
“The Frostola man knew it. Do you think he thought we knew it?”
“Possible, I suppose. I’m not so interested in what he thinks as I am in what he was doing here. Where would we have ended if we had taken the left-hand turn, do you suppose?”
“Why suppose? Unless you’ve had enough of mines for one day, we can go back in and find out.”
“I’ve had enough, but not enough to miss a chance like this. My flashlight is still strong and it shouldn’t take more than a few minutes.”
“Then let’s go. No telling when a spook may visit the mine from this end. Of course there’s no telling about Uncle Frostola, either. He may be inside.”
That hadn’t occurred to Rick. He thought it over,then shrugged. “We might as well take the chance. If he is inside, that proves something, and we’re two to his one. Besides, it’s late, and any sensible man is eating his supper. Come on.”
He led the way back into the cave, but because of the peddler’s possible presence, he wasn’t as headlong in his traversing of the tunnel as he might otherwise have been.
They passed the side tunnel from which they had emerged a short time before and entered entirely new territory. It wasn’t unlike the rest of the mine, consisting of a main bore with some alcoves indicating either deviations of the ore vein or niches cut to allow ore carts to pass.
Walking rapidly, but alert for either sound or light, they traveled through the tunnel at a good speed.
“We’ve been walking quite a while,” Rick said finally. “How long do you suppose this shaft is?”
Scotty thought it over. “It can’t be any longer than the hill is wide, because we’re traveling through the hill. It must be about the same length as the lower tunnel.”
“Why two tunnels?” Rick asked. “I doubt that there were two veins of ore.”
Scotty reminded him of the good ore they had seen in the ceiling of the lower tunnel.
“There might have been just one vein, about two tunnels high. They were limited to pick and shovel for tools in those days, remember, maybe with a little powder for blasting. It would have been move convenient to work within range of tools like shovel and pick. So the ceiling is as high as a man with a pick can reach, and as wide as the ore vein was wide. That’s a little confused, but I’m sure you follow me.”
“Sounds reasonable,” Rick agreed. “Only this tunnel can’t go on much farther, or we’ll be in the middle of the picnic- Hey! Scotty, take a look!”
Ahead in the tunnel was a box, and on the box was metal that reflected the flashlight’s beam. In a second the boys stood over it.
Rick’s heart pounded rapidly. Here was the proof. Here was Missing Fact Number One.
Here was verification of at least part of their speculation.
An eight-millimeter motion-picture projector!
Rick motioned to the front of the machine with a trembling hand. “Look, there’s a film in place, and it’s a continuous loop. Once it’s threaded it will repeat over and over unless cut off.”
Scotty was probing into the box.“Batteries.Two of them, twelve volts each. And I’ll bet the motor in the projector is designed to operate on twelve volts. There’s even a hydrometer for testing the batteries.”
Rick took a look. As Scotty had said, there were two automobile batteries, their cables running up into the projector.
“Simple enough,” he commented. “Let’s see what’s on the film.�
�
He opened the film gate gingerly and removed the film from the sprockets. Then, without disengaging the spindles, he put the flashlight behind it and bent close. The eight-millimeter frames were pretty small, but not so small that he and Scotty couldn’t make out the image.
The scene had been shot against a blackbackground, that was clear. Only the central figure was illuminated, the figure of a Union cavalry officer.
“Meet the Blue Ghost,” Rick said happily.
“Delighted,” Scotty said emphatically. “I suppose I shouldn’t admit it, but deep down, way back in the primitive part of my thick head, I was sometimes guilty of wondering about this creature.”
“I understand. But it doesn’t pay to be too independent in a strange land, I assure you.
Ask Steve Ames.”
The boys stared in amazement. Steve Ames was a close friend, and their contact in JANIG, one of the top American government security organizations.
“How do you know Steve?” Rick asked in astonishment.
“He and I went through theFBIAcademy together. We keep in touch. Also, the
International Police Organization, which is called Interpol, keeps us up to date on developments. I know that your scientific group works closely with Steve.”
SoIsmailbenAdhem was an FBI graduate! Rick looked at him with new respect. “I
guess we should have reported to you,” he said. “We just didn’t know.”
“No matter.It will all work out, anyway. In fact, your delay in contacting us may even make things simpler.”
“How?”Scotty asked.
Ben shrugged. “We will see. This cat of yours has many interesting possibilities.”
“Do you know why the cat is important?” Rick demanded.
“I have an idea. But please do not press me for details. It is better for everything to go on normally while I do a little useful work. So, I suggest you two continue on as before, with only one difference. You will use a different taxi to travel back and forth to Sahara
Wells.”
“ButHassan is our dragoman,” Rick protested.
“Maybe this is the reason,” Rick said. He pointed to rusty iron projecting from the wall.
