His prediction proved true. Larry sat through the long hours of early-morning darkness and heard nothing, saw nothing until the breaking dawn showed him a column of smoke rising above the distant pocket gulch to the left. Larry thought he was safe to go back into the cave and start the breakfast fire, and he did it, though he would not risk leaving his post long enough to go after the coffee water which could only be obtained by carrying it from the disappearing stream beyond the place where they had blasted the big boulder.
The crackling of the fire roused Purdick, and he sat up, rubbing the sleep out of his eyes.
“Anything startling?” he asked.
Larry shook his head. “Nothing yet. They’re getting breakfast, I suppose. Their fire’s going, anyhow.”
Purdick unwound himself from his blankets.
“Good example they’re setting us. We’ll do likewise.” And he got up to go after the water and fry the bacon.
They ate as they did the night before, sitting at the cavern mouth where they could see the gulch in both directions. Immediately after breakfast the ore sorting was resumed, with Purdick on watch under a new spider web which had been spun during the night. For an hour or more Dick and Larry pawed over the heap of broken rock, picking out the brown vein matter and piling it on one side, and leaving the barren rock to be shovelled out to the entrance and over the edge of the dooryard cliff.
It was not until they began getting rid of the rock that hostilities opened up. Purdick, who was still on watch, had neither seen nor heard anything moving in the gulch below, but as Larry ran the first shovelful of stone out to the dumping edge, a rifle clanged somewhere in the woods and a bullet spatted against the cliff a foot or so from the cave mouth. Purdick was ready, but there was nothing to shoot at. A gun flash doesn’t show in the daylight, and the powder in a modern high-powered rifle cartridge doesn’t make much smoke; not enough so that a single discharge is visible at any great distance.
“So that’s the game, is it?” Larry growled, ducking to cover before a second shot could be fired. “We’re not to be allowed to go out on our own doorstep. All right; here’s the answer,” and, standing in the cave passage where he couldn’t be seen from the gulch, he got rid of the spoil by pitching it, a shovelful at a time, into the depths below. The dooryard ledge was only about ten feet wide, and the shovel throw across it was comparatively easy.
With the working ground cleared, the drilling for another series of blasts was begun, the routine of the previous day being followed; that is, half-hour shifts all around, with two of them striking and drill-holding in the tunnel heading and the other on watch. Larry had the first half-hour at the cave mouth, and during that time a number of shots were fired from the gulch. They did no harm. The upward angle was so great that the few bullets well enough aimed to enter the crevice did nothing worse than to knock a splinter of stone from the roof now and then. At first, these leaden invitations to quit were a good bit unnerving, but they soon learned that the way to let the enemy know that he wasn’t accomplishing anything was to keep the ping-ping of the striking hammer going steadily, and in a short time the useless bombardment stopped.