“Apaches; but there was one white man among them.”
“Vy dit dey dit id?” groaned the baron.
“Give it up,” answered the scout. “It must be that this has something to do with those bullion robberies at the Three-ply.”
“Vell, meppy. I can’t undershtand nodding aboudt id, only I haf sooch a sickness. Ach, ach! Oof I don’d ged vell, id vill be some hardt plows for Frieda, I bed you.”
Rising dizzily to his feet, the scout began groping about him. He touched a steep, jagged wall on every side save one. He looked up and saw a circular patch of sky, glimmering with stars; then the truth dawned upon him.
“We’re in an old mine, baron,” he announced.
“Yah? Iss dere any vay to ged oudt?”
The scout’s distress was rapidly passing. With every minute he was getting better, and feeling more like himself.
His belt and guns had been taken from him, and his money and watch were missing from his pockets; but his matches had been left, and he was able to make a brief survey of the shaft.
As nearly as he could judge, it was some thirty feet from the bottom of the shaft to the top. The walls were straight up and down, so that scaling them without a rope, or ladders, was an impossibility.