Clancy occupied the room with Merry, and, when he came to bed, would, of course, note his chum’s absence. It was possible that Frank might get back before Clancy and Ballard broke away from the checkerboard; at any rate, he would certainly be back very soon afterward.
Owing to the hostile attitude of his chums toward Lenning, Frank did not intend to tell them where he was going. It would only open up a subject on which he and they could not agree, but it would tend to show that Frank had not the confidence in Lenning which he professed. This would have been a false impression, and yet it would have been difficult to explain the matter so Clancy and Ballard could understand the real motive which sent Frank to the mine. It was a whole lot better to slip away quietly, and then slip back again, without inviting questions or trying to explain.
Frank went down the back stairs, then stole through the dining room to the door that communicated with the office. Clancy and Ballard were absorbed in their game.
“Wow!” Clancy was saying, “here I go slap into your king row, Pink! Why don’t you wake up and make this game interesting for me?”
“I’ll make it interesting enough, you red-headed chump, before I’m done,” grinned Ballard.
Frank turned back from the door and gumshoed his way into the kitchen and then out at the rear of the hotel. There was no moon, but the sky was clear and the stars were bright. He had no difficulty in following almost the identical course Lenning had led him over in the afternoon. When he struck the trail beyond the town, the thunderous roll of the stamps from the gold mill came to him on the night wind. There were a hundred stamps in the mill, and they raised a din like muffled thunder.
There was a crispness in the cool air that ran through Merry’s veins like a tonic. His step was light, and he threw back his shoulders, sniffed the air delightedly, and pushed on.
The desert, with its shadowy clumps of greasewood, stretched away into the dim distance on either side of the trail. Now and then some bird fluttered in the brush, or some skulking animal raced across the road, but there was no other human being going or coming along the trail at that hour.
As Frank drew nearer the mine, the steady clamor of the stamps grew in volume. At last, when he stood on the slight rise overlooking the shaft house, the bunk house, the mill, and the cyanide plant, the lad paused, admiring the shadowy scene that lay stretched before him.
There were lights in the windows of the bunk house, but they were dull gleams compared with the brightness that shone through every crack and cranny of the great building that housed the beating stamps. There was something ghostlike in the scene, and the effect was heightened by the steady moaning of the mill. An uncanny sensation ruffled Frank’s nerves, but he smothered it with a laugh and started down the slope.