CHAPTER XVI
Trapped!
It was, as Rick said, time for action and not for words. He and Scottyset out to track down every possible shred of evidence. They armedthemselves with flashlights, and Rick made sure he had his pocket lens,and they started out.
The first stop was in the field, to locate the places where last night'sghostly party had paused.
As the boys walked across the field toward the plane, Rick wonderedaloud. "What did the ghost want with the plane?"
"Sabotage?" Scotty asked.
"Maybe. But if so, why?"
"Because he was afraid of what we might see from the air, maybe."
Rick considered. "It could be, I suppose, but we've examined the wholearea from the plane. I didn't see anything suspicious or particularlyinteresting."
"Not a thing," Scotty confirmed. "But it might be a good idea to takeanother look."
"Okay. We can do it later this afternoon. Now, according to what Iremember, the first stop the ghosts made was right about here. Let'swork like hunting dogs and see what we can turn up."
Rick dropped his handkerchief on a clump of bachelor's-buttons for amarker, then he and Scotty walked in ever-widening circles, scanning theground for any trace of the ghosts.
Scotty's keen eyes saw the first sign, a heelprint in a bare place inthe grass. The boys examined it. "Doesn't match anyone's shoes," Scottysaid. "Not of our gang. Leather heels, a little worn, run down on theoutside edge. You can see the nail marks. No rubber heels would makethose marks."
There were other prints, now that they were searching closely. Clearly,three men had walked the field last night. But nowhere did they find aclue to what the men had searched for. There was no raw dirt, noimpressions left where something had been removed.
"Fact," Rick stated. "Three men were here."
Scotty laughed. "This does not mean there were not also three ghosts wholeft no tracks."
Rick had to laugh, too. "Now what do we do?"
"Look in the upland cornfield."
They started the survey of the cornfield directly above the mineentrance, where they had first seen the three ghosts. Tracks werevisible almost at once.
"We're lucky," Scotty said. "Even with the weeds between the rowsthere's enough bare ground so we can do some real tracking. Let's seehow the tracks run."
As Scotty had predicted, the tracking was much easier. A few yards intothe cornfield they came to a gap where a few seeds had failed togerminate or the plants had died. It was a bare space, sparsely grownwith weeds.
Scotty pointed to the three sets of tracks, and put his own feet in oneset, while Rick did the same with another set. From the position of thethird set it was clear that the three men had faced each other.
Rick said excitedly, "They paused and bent over. But over what?"
They scrutinized the ground minutely. It seemed normal enough. There wasabsolutely no sign that the earth had been disturbed.
Rick picked up a handful of soil and examined it. "Dirt," he said."Plain dirt. Why was it so interesting to the spooks?"
"Try your lens," Scotty reminded him.
Rick did so. The lens showed the usual combination of mineral andorganic matter of various sizes and colors. "I can't see anythingunusual," he reported. "Maybe the lens isn't powerful enough. I'll takea sample and look at it under the microscope later." He found a scrap ofpaper in his wallet and folded a bit of dirt into it.
"Let's continue," Scotty urged.
They worked their way across the cornfield, following the tracks. Twicemore they found places where the ghosts had paused to confer aboutsomething, or examine something.
Then, at the edge of the cornfield, they lost the tracks in a rankgrowth of weeds. Probably the ghosts had trampled the weeds last night,but they had sprung up again and left no trace of the passage.
Scotty took the lead. "I'll show you where the car was parked."
They traveled through alternate weeds and hay to where the hilltopdropped away rapidly to a valley about three hundred feet below. Thismarked the end of the igneous outcropping in which the lead mine waslocated, Rick guessed. The hill was steep, and overgrown with blackberrybushes.
"I got caught a thousand times in as many feet last night," Scottycommented. "It's easy by day, but don't try it by night." He led the waythrough clear spaces between the thorny patches, always going downhill.
It wasn't long before Rick saw the road, if it could be called that. Itwas two ruts with grass growing between them.
"Doesn't look like U.S. Highway Number 66," he remarked.
"There's a man who thinks it is," Scotty replied.
Rick looked to where his pal pointed. The Frostola man was approachingon his scooter. The sound of the little motor was just audible, andRick's first impulse was to duck, but Scotty said, "Too late. He saw usjust as we saw him. Let's walk down to the road and make it casual."
They did so, and the peddler approached, bumping over the unevensurface.
"Howdy," he greeted them. "Where does this road go?"
"We don't know," Scotty replied.
Rick added, "We're strangers in the area."
"I'm pretty new myself," the man said cheerfully. "Saw this road andthought there might be a settlement where I could find some newcustomers."
"We don't know of any," Rick said.
"Looks like I might as well go back to town, then. Want a lift? You canhang onto the step behind me."
"No, thanks," Scotty replied. "We're staying just over the hill."
The Frostola man turned his scooter wagon, gave them a wave, and went onhis way back toward town. The boys watched until he drove out of sight.
"There's an optimist," Scotty said. "Follows a pair of ruts, hoping tofind civilization at the other end."
Rick grinned. "He certainly likes this part of Virginia. There's onething about peddling Frostola here--"
"What's that?"
"No customers to bother you. It's easy to commune with Nature."
"Aye-aye. Does he look like a nature lover to you?"
"Now that you mention it, I've seen people who fitted the part better.We scared him away, that's for sure. But what was he doing here?"
Scotty considered. "If he wanted to reach the mine area without peoplenoticing him, he could park his scooter here and walk over the hill."
"He could," Rick agreed. "But why would he want to reach the mine area?"
"Not to sell Frostola. That's for sure."
"Uh-uh. My guess is he has to reset the Blue Ghost."
"Reset it?"
"Sure. Think about it. The projector can't go on operating forever whena clock reaches nine, can it? It must need servicing and resetting."
"And loading with methyl chloride to squirt at us?"
"Too true." Rick had wondered about that. "But how does the chemicalsquirter work? Where is it? The projector must be close to the BlueGhost, if the chemical came from the same place."
Scotty laughed. "You don't discourage easily, do you? We tried to find aprojector beam the other night, remember? What did we get for it? Asquirt in the face. No projector, no nothing."
"There has to be a projector, or an imagemaker of some kind," Rickinsisted, "unless you're admitting the ghost is real."
"Where would it be located?"
"Very close, I'd guess. Hidden somewhere near the spring pool, batteriesand all. It has to be, and I think we'd better spend some time looking."
"Starting where? Don't tell me--it has to be the mine."
Rick was already walking back up the hill toward the cornfield. "There'sno other underground location in which a projector could be stored, isthere? So let's get at it."
"Glad we brought flashlights," was Scotty's only comment.
They hiked in silence to the cornfield, pausing now and then among thecorn plants to examine footprints. Thanks to the rain that had left theground soft, there were plenty of them, but they told the boys no morethan they already knew.
At the top of t
he hill above the mine they paused to survey the scene.Belsely was hauling a load of rock through the field near the plane,using his tractor and a stoneboat. The boys knew he was busy building astone fence. He saw them and waved. They waved back, then went down thehill to the spring and its basin.
Again they examined the entire location with great care, and Scottyprobed seams in the rock with his jackknife blade. The entire hillsidein this location was cracked and seamed and the rock face above thebasin was rough and irregular. Rick wondered if there had ever been anearthquake in the neighborhood or whether the settling of the earth intothe mine has caused the cracking.
"Nothing here," Scotty said. "At least nothing I can see. We'll have totry the mine itself."
They had replaced the boards at the entrance, simply pushing the nailsback into the holes from which they had come. They pulled the boardsaside and saw footprints--and not their own!
"Visitor," Scotty said with excitement.
Rick noted the size of the tracks. "And a big-footed one, too. Makes ourtracks look small."
Scotty pointed. "He came out again, whoever he was. Let's see how far hewent in."
The tracks told the story clearly and quickly. The visitor had gone inabout twenty feet, and had then returned to the outside. One glance toldthe boys why.
The mine was timbered, with uprights and overhead beams spaced aboutevery ten feet. Where the visitor had stopped, the mine timbers weresupporting a big piece--or many pieces--of the rock overhead. Rickguessed that the heavy rain, working through cracks, had loosened asection and let its weight fall on the overhead crosspiece. It was alsoclear that the timbers would not support the weight for very long. Theywere rotten, and wet with the constant seepage of water.
"Must have been one of the Sons of the Old Dominion who wandered in fora look," Rick suggested. "He saw it wasn't safe and went right outagain."
"Something like that," Scotty agreed. "And it isn't safe. Those timberswould go if anyone breathed hard at them."
"Then let's not breathe hard," Rick said.
"Meaning that we're going in, anyway."
Rick pointed out, with what he thought was complete logic, that thetimbers had held the roof up since the rain, and that collapse surelywouldn't take place in a minute or two. He concluded, "And if we'regoing to find any kind of clue to a projector, it has to be in this minesomewhere."
"Then let's not linger," Scotty said. "And for Pete's sake don't stampyour feet when you go by the timbers. A little vibration would send themdown for sure."
Rick asked, "What were the wind and the laughter the last time we werein here?"
"Imagination," Scotty replied. "Let's keep it under control this time."
"I'm with you. And ghosts don't blow out flashlights, so let's go."
They moved cautiously past the unsafe place, lights probing the tunnelwalls for a sign of anything unusual or worthy of attention. Now andthen they reached a bay where ore had been taken out, or a jog in thetunnel where the miners had lost the ore vein temporarily. They reachedthe spot of their penetration into the mine on their last visit andfound the remains of their torches.
"No change. Thought they might have been chewed by ghosts," Scottycommented.
"Newsprint doesn't taste good," Rick replied. "Do ghosts have teeth?"
"Nope, just an icy breath. Do you remember any smell, by the way? Whenwe got hit in our faces?"
"Something sort of sweet?"
"Yes. I wasn't thinking about smelling, and I didn't notice especially,but I sort of recall a nice odor."
Rick thought he remembered it, too. "We'll look up methyl chloride inthe dictionary," he promised. "That will tell us if it has an odor."
The mine took a sharp turn. "They lost the vein here and had to chew outsome rock to find it again," Rick pointed out. "Notice everything is onone level? Must have been just one vein. It ran out and the mine closeddown."
"Looks that way," Scotty agreed. "How far have we come?"
Rick hadn't kept track, but he estimated they were perhaps halfway underthe hill. "This must end somewhere," he said. "Notice there isn't anywater at all, not even seepage? I'm still baffled by that spring and thepipe."
They traversed another hundred yards in silence, flashlights constantlyscanning the mine. There was nothing out of the ordinary, no sign ofghost, projector, or even of human visitation for dozens of years.
"We're on another wild-goose..." Rick began. He never finished, forsound suddenly reverberated through the mine, the sound of rock crashingdownward.
Both boys turned and ran back toward the entrance, afraid of what theywould find. Long before they reached it, billowing clouds of dust toldthem what had happened.
Their racing legs confirmed it as they came to a stop against rock thatchoked the tunnel from top to bottom.
_The timber had given way. They were trapped!_]
The timbers had given way. They were trapped!
The Blue Ghost Mystery: A Rick Brant Science-Adventure Story Page 16
