“What’s that?” barked the chief; then, sharply: “Bannagher—fling a line to that raft, quick! You fellows out there—grab that line and haul the raft ashore!” Then, wheeling short upon the boys: “Now then—out with it, you two; what have you found?”
Most haltingly and shamefacedly they told of the chance discovery of the hollow stomach in the Old Man of the Mountain, and of the drainage possibility it afforded, and a swift investigation followed. Instantly the plan that Larry had suggested in the talk with Dick was put into effect. The timber raft was towed up to the gulch bank near the old prospect tunnel, and with team-work celerity the tank bomb was slid into place in the tunnel mouth and many hands with picks and shovels filled the hole and tamped it solidly.
When all was ready, everybody retreated to a safe distance on the hillside and the fuse was lighted. After a breathless interval of what seemed to Dick and Larry like a full half-hour—though it was really less than five minutes—there came a low, grumbling roar like the groan of a buried monster, the solid earth shook as if with a sudden shivering ague chill, and with the thunder of a hundred cataracts blended into one the flood lake began to pour into the depths of the Old Man of the Mountain to find its way to the canyon below through the crevice passages.
It was quite some time after dark before the park-like valley became habitable again and the work of restoring the camp was gotten under way. Mr. Ackerman’s office tent was one of the first to be set up, with a flooring of planks over the soaked ground, and it was here that Dick and Larry were, in railroad phrase, “called upon the carpet.”
“There’s just one thing missing now,” the chief said, eyeing them sharply after they had told the story of the cave discovery in detail: “I want to know why you didn’t tell us about this cave before we launched the raft?”
As usual when both were called upon, Dick did the talking. And his answer was manfully straightforward.
“At first, we didn’t mean to tell you at all. We—we had talked it over, and we thought that the O. C. people had something coming to them for what they had done to us.” Then he swallowed once or twice and wet his lips and added: “I think maybe we wouldn’t have told, if we hadn’t both been scared stiff for fear some of their trestle builders would be drowned.”
For a moment or so the chief said nothing. Then a grim little smile, or at least the shadow of one, began to draw at the corners of his eyes.
“When you two fellows go to college, if you do go, one of the first things the faculty will tell you will be that they won’t undertake to build you over morally,” he said. “A railroad construction camp is a good bit the same way; nobody in it is going to take the trouble to ride herd on you in the field of good morals, or to decide nice questions of right and wrong for you. You’ve got to stand upon your own feet and do those things for yourselves.