“I don’t know, Chot. But I can make a guess at one thing.”
“What’s that?”
“Those are the men—or, anyhow, they’re in the same gang—that took away Lost River.”
“What do you mean—took away Lost River?”
“Look,” went on Rick, still speaking in a whisper. “You can see where the channel was, running right into this tunnel. There’s the old bed of the river. Now it’s running off to the left so it flows into their flume box. They changed the river, that’s what they did.”
“I believe you’re right,” said Chot, after looking over the outlay that was before them. They could see it well, hidden as they were just inside the tunnel entrance. “But how could they make a river run in a new place?”
“By making a dam, or digging a new channel. I don’t see that they have dug any new channel, so they must have built a dam, or some sort of thing to send the river down the way they wanted it instead of letting it come through the tunnel to Uncle Tod’s mine.”
“But where is the dam, or whatever it is? I don’t see anything like it here.”
“No, it’s probably up above their camp. We’ll have to prospect around a bit and find it.”
“S’posin’ they see us?”