Whatever it might mean, it was instantly made plain that they were not to be given a chance to investigate. Somewhere down in the gulch a rifle cracked and a bullet tore its way through the dense foliage of the hanging tree. Reckless of his own safety, Purdick tried to part the thick branches so that he could see and poke his gun through for a reply, but the thick screen was impenetrable.
Courageously persistent, the small one was still trying to force his way through the thickset branches when something that seemed to take the shape of a huge ball of fire came down from above, and a choking gust of resinous smoke drove Purdick back gasping. The man on the ledge above had lowered a blazing torch of some kind, and the hanging tree was afire.
“We’re done for!” Dick gasped, fighting for breath in the stifling smoke cloud that was instantly drawn into the crevice by the chimneying draft, and he was starting to feel his way toward the inner depths when Larry grabbed him and shoved him forcibly toward the gold vein opening.
“The mine tunnel!” he choked. “There is no draft in there! Hurry, for pity’s sake! Where are you, Purdy?”
The great tree was roaring like a fiery furnace before they had stumbled blindly to the small tunnel entrance, and tongues of flame were licking far into the crevice as if the heat were increasing the natural draft a hundred fold. Panting, blinded and choking, they crowded into the farther end of the blasted-out pocket which had been their refuge from the flood, and though the smoke was there before them, the air was still breathable.
As everybody who has ever seen a forest fire knows, the mountain conifers burn as rapidly as if their leaves were made of celluloid. While the three crowding burrowers were still gasping for breath, the flame roar went out, but the dense smoke cloud continued to pour into the cavern.
Into the silence that followed the expiring flame blast came a sharp staccato of rifle shots, yells of rage or dismay, they couldn’t tell which, and then more rifle crashes. After these there was another interval of silence, which was shortly broken by a recurrence of the chopping axe blows from above. After a few of the dull-sounding axe blows the smoking tree-torch let go and rolled down into the gulch; the welcome sunlight began to penetrate the smoky interior of the cave, and a grateful gush of fresh air came to make life a little better worth living.
“I wonder what’s happened,” said Dick hoarsely. And then: “I’m crying so hard I can’t see.”
They were all three weeping copiously, for that matter; smoke tears they were, but none the less blinding for all that. Rubbing their eyes, they stumbled down into the cavern, little Purdick with his gun up and ready to fire. At the mouth of the mine tunnel they were met, not by a trio of murderers ready to shoot them down, as they fully expected, but by an apparition—a tall old man, white-haired and with a snowy beard reaching almost to his waist.
“Daddy Longbeard!” Dick cried out, dashing the tears from his eyes. “Where, for goodness’ sake, did you come from?”