“What then?” asked Rick, curiously.
“Well, I don’t exactly know. There’s some sort of danger in here, but what it is nobody seems able to tell. Sam says it’s ghosts, but shucks! I never saw a ghost yet that was worth a mess of beans! But, for all that, other miners around here say they wouldn’t venture into this tunnel.”
“Maybe they’re afraid of the water suddenly coming back,” suggested Chot.
“Well, there may be something in that,” agreed Uncle Tod. “But if Lost River starts to come back we can hear it and get out of the way. Besides, the river never covered more than a small part of the bottom of the tunnel—that is when it was running at its best. There was room to walk on either side of it, and it wasn’t deep in the middle. So even if the water should come back it wouldn’t harm us.”
“Unless,” said Rick, “we happened to be in a narrow part of the tunnel where the river filled it completely.”
“Well, yes,” admitted Uncle Tod, “in that case it might be dangerous. But we won’t enter any narrow part unless we see it’s safe. No, it isn’t the water I’m worried about. It’s some unknown sort of danger that Sam fears, and that other miners around here fear.”
“Have other miners spoken of it?” asked Chot.
“Yes, several of ’em since the water stopped. When my mine went dry, and there wasn’t any more chance of working it, I said I was going in this tunnel and see what the trouble was. I was advised against it by several. They said there was a story that, years ago, the water stopped running. Some Indians went in to see why and—well, they never came out again.” Uncle Tod shook his head dubiously.
“Did the water start flowing once more?” Rick wanted to know.
“Yes, it must have, for it’s been running for years. No one around here has ever seen it dry—it’s just a rumor that it was.”