“It’s big enough to swallow a horse almost,” cried Ralph.
“It’s big enough to save our lives, maybe,” grunted Pete, “but maybe it’s only a blind lead, and may come out nowhere. In that case a fellow at the bottom of a well would be better off than the chap in there, for ther’d be no way of gitting out uv that chimney once you got in, and—Jumping Jupiter! Come back, boy!”
But it was too late. While Coyote Pete had been talking, Jack had slipped into the fireplace, and clutching the rough sides of the chimney had taken the daring drop.
The others listened above in breathless anxiety, and then, to their infinite relief, a voice trickled up to them from the depths.
“It’s all right, boys! Come on, but take it easy, for I knocked all the skin off my shins in my hurry.”
The blows on the roof were by this time becoming louder, and they could distinctly hear the sound of splintering wood as the axe blades cut into it.
“They’ll hev pecked through that in ten minutes, now,” said Pete, getting over to one side of the fireplace, “come on, boys. Be on your way.”
But the boys insisted on the professor going first, now that they knew the drop was safe enough. Not without misgivings, to which he was too brave to give utterance. Professor Wintergreen, scientist and writer, cast himself into that black hole in the garret of the lonely rancho. An instant later, after a prodigious scraping and bumping, word came up that he, too, was safe. Ralph and Walt came next, the former softly humming:—
“I don’t know where I’m goin’, but I’m on my way.”
Coyote Pete came last; and now we shall follow the party, leaving the Mexicans still hacking away at the roof. It is a trip worth taking, too, for at the bottom of the chimney an astonishing condition of things prevailed.