“Come,” cried the girl, “let us leave this terrible place.”
Hammond sprang to her side and they hurried out through the tunnel and down through the pass in the rock to the trail in the woods. Not until they had crossed the bridge over the creek did Josephine Stone pause to speak. Her face was pale and Hammond noted with alarm she was all a-tremble.
“Oh, that rushing water!” She gasped. “The lightning—and that man!”
“Man?”
“Yes. You didn’t see him. But I did—his face at the other end of the tunnel—in the lightning flash.”
“What did he look like? Where did he go?”
“He was an Indian—he seemed to fade out of sight like a spirit.”
There flashed on Hammond memory of what Sandy Macdougal had told him about an Indian shadowing him, but he said lightly: “Likely some idle Indian following us out of curiosity.”
Josephine Stone shook her head. “There is something wicked and mysterious about the Cup of Nannabijou,” she contended. “They say men have gone up there and never been seen again. I should not have let you attempt to get down into that stream-bed.”
“I might have had a narrow squeak if I had attempted it a minute or so sooner,” he reflected. Then: “By the way, if I may ask, how long do you expect to remain at Amethyst Island?”