This they found they could do, Ruddy managing to scramble up after they had helped him over the worst places.
Again they found a fairly level road before them—a road that sloped slightly upward, this slope giving the downward current to Lost River where it had emerged at Uncle Tod’s mine.
Suddenly, as Chot walked along a little in advance, he gave an exclamation.
“What is it?” asked Rick, who was flashing his light upward, trying to ascertain how high the roof was.
“I see daylight!” cried Chot.
Rick hurried to his chum’s side. Gleaming ahead of them was unmistakably daylight, coming through an irregularly shaped opening like another mouth to the tunnel. And, as the boys advanced nearer they saw, moving about, in the open beyond the tunnel’s mouth, several men.
“Go easy!” whispered Rick, catching his chum by the arm.
“All right,” assented Chot. Ruddy was held back. The boys cautiously advanced until they could look out upon a level place, seemingly in some valley and there, hidden from view as they were in the tunnel, they saw a strange camp.
CHAPTER XXI
SCOUTING AROUND
For a moment or two both Rick and Chot thought that they had played a trick upon themselves, and that they were gazing upon the headquarters of Uncle Tod and Sam Rockford who might be entertaining guests. The same idea was in the mind of both boys. They jumped to the conclusion that they had circled about in the tunnel, had, somehow or other, gotten into the same shaft they had first explored with Uncle Tod and so had doubled back on their trail.