"Then I'm goin' to give orders right off. Larry and Jim and Dan and me, and Jacques there, and Tom Curtis will make the investigating-party; t'others waits here and takes cover under boulders. Our friend Tim, what's been round the mines these many years, will take charge of the lot of you, and will post a man at the 'phone ready to call up the other parties. This here young fellow, Harry Dance, will follow us in five minutes after we've started, and when he's gone for five minutes, this here Tim will make in after him, and ef we are longer still, and moving up, Frank Stebbins will take the track into the mine so as to keep in contact. It will be a sort of relay business. Ef we get held up, the message can be passed back, and ef we want help some of you can come in after us. Only mind, there's always got to be a guard standing here in case the fellow doubles; for you've got to remember that in the workings in there there are burrows in all directions, and a man can leave the main gallery and turn and twist and come back on his tracks and easily avoid a search-party."
Donning the rubber shoes which had been brought for them, and each of them tucking a portion of bread and meat into his pockets, while Dan and the Sheriff shouldered the cans of tea, the party saw to their weapons. Jim made sure that the electric torch he carried was in working order, and thrust the reserve one in his pocket. Then, at a nod from the Sheriff, and a cheery "Good luck!" from the party who were to remain behind, and who watched their departure ruefully, Jim led the way into the mine, and presently he and his friends were swallowed up by the darkness.
CHAPTER III In the Mine Shafts
There was dense opaqueness within the bosom of the gigantic mountain which the industry of man in Utah has honeycombed with passages, and once the search-party, with Jim at the head, had gained some distance from the exit and had turned abruptly to their left, thereby cutting themselves off, as it were, from the few stray rays of daylight which filtered in through the arched entrance, the darkness seemed to become accentuated, while the silence was positively startling.
"Stop!"
Jim touched the Sheriff on the sleeve, and the latter signalled to the next man behind him, and so they all came to a halt. There they stood listening for three or four minutes.
"Pat-a-pat! pat-a-pat!" they heard, and then a deep splash. "Pat-a-pat! pat-a-pat!" once more, and then a bubbling sound, only to give way to that same refrain: "Pat-a-pat! pat-a-pat!"
"It's——!" gasped the Sheriff, for he was an open-air man, a farmer in the neighbourhood, and these inner workings rather tended to overawe him. "What is it?" he whispered.