Trapped!
It was, as Rick said, time for action and not for words. He and Scotty set out to track down every possible shred of evidence. They armed themselves 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's ghostly party had paused.
As the boys walked across the field toward the plane, Rick wondered aloud. "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 whole area from the plane. I didn't see anything suspicious or particularly interesting."
"Not a thing," Scotty confirmed. "But it might be a good idea to take another look."
"Okay. We can do it later this afternoon. Now, according to what I remember, the first stop the ghosts made was right about here. Let's work like hunting dogs and see what we can turn up."
Rick dropped his handkerchief on a clump of bachelor's-buttons for a marker, then he and Scotty walked in ever-widening circles, scanning the ground for any trace of the ghosts.
Scotty's keen eyes saw the first sign, a heelprint in a bare place in the grass. The boys examined it. "Doesn't match anyone's shoes," Scotty said. "Not of our gang. Leather heels, a little worn, run down on the outside edge. You can see the nail marks. No rubber heels would make those 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 a clue to what the men had searched for. There was no raw dirt, no impressions 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 who left 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 mine entrance, where they had first seen the three ghosts. Tracks were visible almost at once.
"We're lucky," Scotty said. "Even with the weeds between the rows there's enough bare ground so we can do some real tracking. Let's see how the tracks run."
As Scotty had predicted, the tracking was much easier. A few yards into the cornfield they came to a gap where a few seeds had failed to germinate or the plants had died. It was a bare space, sparsely grown with weeds.
Scotty pointed to the three sets of tracks, and put his own feet in one set, while Rick did the same with another set. From the position of the third 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 was absolutely 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 and organic matter of various sizes and colors. "I can't see anything unusual," he reported. "Maybe the lens isn't powerful enough. I'll take a sample and look at it under the microscope later." He found a scrap of paper 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. Twice more they found places where the ghosts had paused to confer about something, or examine something.
Then, at the edge of the cornfield, they lost the tracks in a rank growth 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 hilltop dropped away rapidly to a valley about three hundred feet below. This marked the end of the igneous outcropping in which the lead mine was located, Rick guessed. The hill was steep, and overgrown with blackberry bushes.
"I got caught a thousand times in as many feet last night," Scotty commented. "It's easy by day, but don't try it by night." He led the way through clear spaces between the thorny patches, always going downhill.
It wasn't long before Rick saw the road, if it could be called that. It was 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 approaching on his scooter. The sound of the little motor was just audible, and Rick's first impulse was to duck, but Scotty said, "Too late. He saw us just 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 uneven surface.
"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 and thought there might be a settlement where I could find some new customers."
"We don't know of any," Rick said.
"Looks like I might as well go back to town, then. Want a lift? You can hang 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 on his 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 to find civilization at the other end."
Rick grinned. "He certainly likes this part of Virginia. There's one thing 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 people noticing 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 when a 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 chemical squirter work? Where is it? The projector must be close to the Blue Ghost, if the chemical came from the same place."
Scotty laughed. "You don't discourage easily, do you? We tried to find a projector beam the other night, remember? What did we get for it? A squirt in the face. No projector, no nothing."
"There has to be a projector, or an imagemaker of some kind," Rick insisted, "unless you're admitting the ghost is real."
"Where would it be located?"
"Very close, I'd guess. Hidden somewhere near the spring pool, batteries and 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's no other underground location in which a projector could be stored, is there? 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 the corn plants to examine footprints. Thanks to the rain that had left the ground soft, there were plenty of them, but they told the boys no more than they already knew.
At the top of the 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 a stone fence. He saw them and waved. They waved back, then went down the hill to the spring and its basin.
Again they examined the entire location with great care, and Scotty probed seams in the rock with his jackknife blade. The entire hillside in this location was cracked and seamed and the rock face above the basin was rough and irregular. Rick wondered if there had ever been an earthquake in the neighborhood or whether the settling of the earth into the mine has caused the cracking.
"Nothing here," Scotty said. "At least nothing I can see. We'll have to try the mine itself."
They had replaced the boards at the entrance, simply pushing the nails back into the holes from which they had come. They pulled the boards aside 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 our tracks look small."
Scotty pointed. "He came out again, whoever he was. Let's see how far he went in."
The tracks told the story clearly and quickly. The visitor had gone in about twenty feet, and had then returned to the outside. One glance told the boys why.
The mine was timbered, with uprights and overhead beams spaced about every ten feet. Where the visitor had stopped, the mine timbers were supporting a big piece—or many pieces—of the rock overhead. Rick guessed that the heavy rain, working through cracks, had loosened a section and let its weight fall on the overhead crosspiece. It was also clear that the timbers would not support the weight for very long. They were rotten, and wet with the constant seepage of water.
"Must have been one of the Sons of the Old Dominion who wandered in for a look," Rick suggested. "He saw it wasn't safe and went right out again."
"Something like that," Scotty agreed. "And it isn't safe. Those timbers would 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 the timbers had held the roof up since the rain, and that collapse surely wouldn't take place in a minute or two. He concluded, "And if we're going to find any kind of clue to a projector, it has to be in this mine somewhere."
"Then let's not linger," Scotty said. "And for Pete's sake don't stamp your feet when you go by the timbers. A little vibration would send them down for sure."
Rick asked, "What were the wind and the laughter the last time we were in 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 tunnel walls for a sign of anything unusual or worthy of attention. Now and then they reached a bay where ore had been taken out, or a jog in the tunnel where the miners had lost the ore vein temporarily. They reached the spot of their penetration into the mine on their last visit and found the remains of their torches.
"No change. Thought they might have been chewed by ghosts," Scotty commented.
"Newsprint doesn't taste good," Rick replied. "Do ghosts have teeth?"
"Nope, just an icy breath. Do you remember any smell, by the way? When we 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 in the 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 out some rock to find it again," Rick pointed out. "Notice everything is on one level? Must have been just one vein. It ran out and the mine closed down."
"Looks that way," Scotty agreed. "How far have we come?"
Rick hadn't kept track, but he estimated they were perhaps halfway under the hill. "This must end somewhere," he said. "Notice there isn't any water at all, not even seepage? I'm still baffled by that spring and the pipe."
They traversed another hundred yards in silence, flashlights constantly scanning the mine. There was nothing out of the ordinary, no sign of ghost, projector, or even of human visitation for dozens of years.
"We're on another wild-goose..." Rick began. He never finished, for sound suddenly reverberated through the mine, the sound of rock crashing downward.
Both boys turned and ran back toward the entrance, afraid of what they would find. Long before they reached it, billowing clouds of dust told them what had happened.
Their racing legs confirmed it as they came to a stop against rock that choked the tunnel from top to bottom.
The timber had given way. They were trapped!
The timbers had given way. They were trapped!