“Hansart must have been behind it all!”
“He certainly wasn’t suspected, Jack. But what we’ve seen today convinces me—”
“No search ever was made for him?”
“None that I recall, Jack. You see, Joe was a queer one, even as a young man. The lone-wolf type. He had no relatives anyone ever heard about. When he’d vanish for a year or so at a time, no one thought anything of it. Then finally the story grew that he’d disappeared on a prospecting trip into this valley.”
“He must have lived in that wreck of a cabin we took over—the one built by your father and Old Stony.”
“Yes,” Warner agreed. “I’d guess that gold ore we found at the mine entrance—the good stuff—came from the original cache and poor old Joe stored it in here.”
“Probably he keeps pretty close watch of this mine,” Jack remarked, a note of uneasiness in his voice. “How long have we been down here, anyhow?”
“Too long.”
“Let’s get out,” Jack urged, starting over the rough, uneven tunnel floor.
Warner’s flashlight guided them to the main opening into the mine.