CHAPTER XX.
AT THE ESMERALDA MINE.
"If only I was certain that my boy and his friends were safe, Geisler, I wouldn't feel so much anxiety."
Mr. Merrill, an anxious look on his face, paced up and down the floor of the office of the Esmeralda Mine. It was the morning of the day following the dash for safety in Buck Bradley's car, and the mine owner and his superintendent had been in anxious consultation since breakfast. In truth, they had enough to worry them. In the specie room of the mine was stored more than $20,000 worth of dust, the product of the big stamp mill.
From what they had been able to ascertain, the insurrectos were unusually active in the neighborhood. Open warning had been sent to the American mine owners, including Mr. Merrill, to be prepared to yield up generously and freely, or have their property destroyed. In addition to this worry, the mine owner and his superintendent, together with the three young "level bosses," had been practically cut off from communication with the outside world for the past twenty-four hours.
A branch of the Chihuahua Northern tapped the mine, but no train had puffed its way up the steep grade for more than three days, and it was useless to try to use the wires, as they had been put out of commission almost at the beginning of the trouble in the province.
"If I had ever dreamed the trouble would assume such serious proportions, the last thing I would have done would have been to allow the professor or his young charges to journey to the Haunted Mesa," continued the mine owner.
Geisler, a rotund German, with a wealth of flaxen hair and moustache, puffed at his china-bowled pipe before replying.
"Dese Megxicans is der teufel ven dey get started, ain'd idt?" he remarked. "For a veek, now, dere has not been a tap of vork done py der mine, und nodt a sign uv der rabblescallions uv loafers vot vos employed deere."