Facing around to let his candle show him what the sudden halt meant, he saw that Lop-Ear, or his pack, or both, were stuck in the passage. It didn’t seem to be a very bad stick, so he hunted up a niche to put the candle in, wrapped the hackamore strap around his hands, and braced himself for a long pull, a strong pull, and a pull all together.
The scheme worked all right, so far as starting the stopped rear-guard was concerned. While Dick pulled manfully, the little pack-beast dug its hoofs in, humped its back, and came through the squeeze triumphantly. But the triumph was short-lived. At the releasing of the resistance to his pull, Dick had to run backward a few steps to recover his balance. The little involuntary backward run was probably all that saved his life, as well as that of the burro. For that was the precise instant when the weak-kneed hope that Dick had offered turned loose its hold: there was a rumbling sound like a huge earth sigh, a choking rush of dust-laden air, and the tunnel roof, in the exact spot where the high-piled jack load had touched it, had fallen in and plugged the passage.
Dick yelled promptly to his companions, who had passed out of sight around the next turn in the corridor, and they both came back to see what was wanted. Dick held his candle up to show them the plugged passage.
“Humph!” said Larry; “that does settle it. We’re trapped for fair, I should say. How did it happen?”
Dick explained. “Lop-Ear was stuck and I pulled on the halter to help him through. I guess he humped himself so hard that the pack knocked against the roof and loosened it. I wonder how long it’s going to take us to dig our way out?”
Larry shook his head. “That’s a horse—or a donkey—of another color. Depends on how much of the stuff has fallen. Purdy, run on ahead to where we left Fishbait and get the pick and shovel from his pack.”
When the digging tools were brought, they attacked the plug manfully, spelling one another with the pick and shovel. A full hour of the hardest kind of work got them nowhere. Apparently there was no end to the amount of broken rock and earth mould that had fallen in; and, worse than that, they had no place to put the stuff as they dug it out. All they could do was to pile it up behind them as they dug, and that merely shifted the obstructing plug from one place to another.
“They say that curiosity killed the cat,” said Purdick, at the end of the hour of hard labor, when they sat down on the pile of débris for a breathing spell. “If I hadn’t been so curious about that pocket of pyrites and persuaded you fellows to come back into this hole——”
“Nothing like that,” Dick cut in promptly. “If there’s any blame lying around loose, it’s mine. But taking the blame doesn’t get us out of here. What do you say, Larry?”