“Well, if he isn’t the very cheese!” chuckled Chot, later, when his chum told him about it. “Can’t even give a dog a bone without making a secret of it!”
A little later, after supper, Uncle Tod noticed that one of Jake’s thumbs was sprained.
“How’d that happen?” asked Mr. Belmont.
“Fight—Zeek Took,” was the answer, and partly in sign language, using as few words as possible, Jake related how, on his way to Uncle Tod’s camp, he had encountered the sneaking Zeek. Jake had heard from friends on his way out, of the outcome in the fight to restore Lost River, and knew Zeek to be a spy in the pay of the Lawson gang. Jake taxed Zeek with trying to learn things about Uncle Tod’s camp, to report to the Lawsons (as afterward proved to be the case) and there was a fight between the two.
“Well, you got a sprained thumb out of it,” commented Uncle Tod. “I reckon that maybe Zeek—”
“You should see him!” was all Jake would say. After this Zeek was not heard from in that locality.
In spite of his odd ways Jake was welcomed at camp, and began working at getting out the gold and other metals. It was he who discovered the secret of the weird noises heard by the boys in the tunnel. Once, when the water was shut off from Uncle Tod’s camp, to enable some improvements to be made at the flume, Rick and Chot undertook to show Jake through the tunnel they had explored.
While in it they heard the same disconcerting noises, and could not determine what made them until Jake suggested that they sounded like the voices of men, magnified, or amplified, as if by an echo.
And this proved to be the case. For, emerging from the tunnel, the boys found Uncle Tod and some men strengthening the water gates, since it was decided to leave the dam in place to better control the river. And it was the voices of the men, filtering in through the tunnel, and being amplified in the various crevices and chasms that caused the weird groans, howls and shrieks.
The boys tried it for themselves, being able, by making strange noises such as only boys know how to produce, to cause a veritable bedlam of sound in the tunnel.