“Suppose we go back to the boat?” asked Alex.
Case threw himself down on a rock, yawned, and pointed to the western lip of the big canyon. It showed a tinge of pink.
“It is time, I think,” he said. “This light is not that of the moon, but of the sun! We’ve been all night blundering around here!”
But it was not possible to reach the boat in a few minutes. The lads were far up the east side of the canyon, and the path to the bottom was long, winding, and uncertain. They had wandered far to the north, too, and the location of the boat was hidden by a rocky summit.
Below them lay the level filling in front of the old copper mine. At the northern extremity of the fill stood a single shack, built of the boles of yellow pine and roofed with shingles rough-hewn from the same useful tree. Case pointed down and gave his chum a nudge in the ribs.
“Uncle David’s home!” he said. “The deserted shack!”
“Deserted!” echoed the other. “If it is deserted, tell me what the dickens the chimney is smoking for?”
What the boy said was true, for a thin column of smoke was ascending from the chimney of the old mine house, supposed to have been deserted by mankind long ago!
“Suppose we go down and make a social call?” suggested Case.
“It would be all right to find out who lives there,” Alex agreed.