“Where the sun first strikes the wall in the morning, there is Ninety-Nine’s Mine,” ran the saying which the simple-minded woman had confided so mysteriously to him. The “wall,” of course, was the cliff-line within the Traps, not the great outer wall. Whimsically he decided to sleep that night upon the eastern heights and see just where the rising sun would strike first. Sunrise on the Traps, viewed from that lofty edge of things, would be a scene well worth a chilly night outdoors.
With a pack of blankets and spare clothing and a little food he started to go. But, with a boyish laugh, he returned to the house. From some old burlap bags and a few sticks of wood he made on Jake Dalton’s bed a huddle which, in dim light, would resemble a blanketed form. Then he departed, whistling merrily.
Dusk found him high up on the Wall. At the same hour a form slipped out from the trees backing the house of Dalton. It peered nervously in at a gloomy window, stole along the side, slipped rapidly to the front stoop, and, with a quick jab, slid a piece of paper under the door. Then it jumped away and ran.
On the paper was written in scrawling characters:
“For gord Sakes dont Sleep hear to Nite.”
CHAPTER XVII
A STAB IN THE NIGHT
Rain drizzled monotonously down on the Traps; cold, raw rain swept slantwise by wind. Along Mohonk and the Great Wall crawled clammy fog, blinding all vision and chilling all flesh within its folds. Through rain and fog feebly penetrated the sickly light of a dismal dawn.
In the dankness and the dimness moved a bedraggled figure laden with a sodden blanket-pack and a dripping shotgun; a man whose blue lips and hollow eyes betokened a gnawing chill and scant sleep. Downward through dripping bushes he meandered uncertainly, avoiding steep slants of smooth rock on which his slippery boot-soles would inevitably precipitate him into disaster, and peering continuously about in search for a thin spot in the creeping cloud-bank. Only the unmistakable slant of the mountainside told him which way he was heading—back into the Traps gulf which he had left on the previous day.
“A gorgeous sunrise—I guess so!” he grumbled. “Mister Jupiter Pluvius, this is a dirty, low-down trick. And Mister Ninety-Nine, you can keep your mine till the crack of doom, for all I care. Go to thunder, both of you! I’m cured.”
If the two old-timers whom he addressed were listening, they must have chortled in malicious mirth—especially the former. Catching this mortal asleep beside a dying fire, the rain-god had called up his soggy servitors in the night and let them wreak their will on the lone man—drowning his fire in the first drenching assault and then battering him right merrily. Without shelter, without light, he had been compelled to huddle up and endure it until dawn; and even now, though he was in motion once more, he had to shut his teeth to keep them from chattering.