A sudden, muffled roar drowned his voice. A cloud of smoke belched from the wall, and the next instant a huge section of the rock crashed down into the tunnel, filling it to nearly half its height, and totally obliterating every sign of the unfortunate man who had stood there.
The cry of horror which Dick Merriwell uttered as he sprang forward, changed to one of joy when he saw that, instead of being utterly crushed, Fairchilds had escaped the heaviest part of the fall by a swift, forward plunge, and was only pinned down by the weight of some large chunks of rock which had dropped on his legs.
He saw something else, too, which sent a thrill through him and turned his tanned face a shade less brown.
Directly above the mine owner, a great mass of loosened rock hung as if suspended by a thread, and as the Yale man glanced up, it quivered a little. The slightest movement—the vibration of a voice, perhaps—would send it crashing down on those two beneath. Yet Dick did not hesitate an instant.
Swiftly sticking the candle upright in a crevice, he bent over the fallen man and, with infinite caution, began to lift the pieces of ore from his legs.
Despite the shock he had experienced, Orren Fairchilds was quite conscious. Lying on his back, his eyes fixed on the tottering mass which was poised above him, he knew well that death was staring him in the face, and he appreciated to the full the heroism of the man who was deliberately risking his own life in what seemed a futile attempt to save another’s.
He moistened his dry lips.
“You can’t do it,” he whispered. “Leave me. Get back—quickly! Another moment and it will fall!”
He dared not raise his voice; his eyes never left the trembling rock above him.
Dick Merriwell made no answer; apparently he did not consider one necessary. One by one the heavy chunks of rock were lifted up and put aside.