“The mule won’t go. He is winded, I guess.”
“He must go. Keep him at it.”
Another clap of thunder followed. The mule pranced about wildly. All the others had gone ahead, and Oliver was left alone to deal with the animal.
“Whoa!” he called out. “Whoa, Dobbins!”
But Dobbins would not stop his prancing. Another clap of thunder, and a mass of rocks came crashing down close to the spot where the mule stood.
In a twinkling his hind feet rose in the air, and his rider was unseated and thrown to the ground. Then Dobbins tore away, leaving Oliver to his fate.
CHAPTER XXVI.
THE AURORA MINE AT LAST.
Oliver now found himself in an exceedingly perilous position. The rain came down in such a torrent that he could not see five yards ahead, and what had become of his mule he did not know.
He picked himself up from the spot where he had been thrown, and crouched for a moment under an overhanging rock. As he did so, a blinding flash of lightning swept by, and on the instant a tall tree that stood not over two hundred feet away was split from the top to the bottom, and was wrapped in a blaze of fire!