"God only knows. But we might make a rush fer it when night shets down. That's our only hope, an' what will that poor child do in the meantime without grub? We kin stand it; but a child is different. He wants to eat about all the time."
"Look here, Dan," and Grey picked up his rifle lying on the ground. "It's my turn now. You go and lie down awhile, for I intend to watch."
"An' ye'll be sure to wake me if the Injuns come?"
Grey almost laughed outright at such a request, and even a smile flitted across the trapper's face as he slowly wended his way to the dark entrance of the cave.
"An' so he thinks I'll sleep, does he?" he mumbled. "Wall, I'll see about that."
Thrusting his hand into a pocket in his jacket he brought forth a small candle. This he deliberately lighted with a match produced from his match case of two cartridge shells fitted neatly together. Glancing first at the constable and then at the sleeping child, he moved forward within the cave. The flickering light of the candle showed up dimly the rugged wall about him. Here and there large wooden logs, much decayed, were seen sticking forth where the earth had tumbled in.
"Ha, ha! I thought so," he muttered. "This has been a mine as sure as sunrise. Hello! what's this?"
Stooping, he picked up a piece of iron against which his foot had struck.
"A pick, by jimminy, an' a queer old one at that. None of yer new-fangled ones. My! the man wot swung that must have been a monster. He was a Rooshian, that's who he was. Now it's sartin that they dug this place."
Holding the candle high he slowly advanced, the passage becoming narrower all the time, owing to the falling earth.