“There must be old workings, Cody, which have been closed up.”
“Nick’s disappearance can’t be explained in any other way. I suppose Nick saw Lawless or one of his men, and was struck down before he could do anything more than give that one yell; then he was dragged through some hole that we haven’t been able to find.”
Buffalo Bill got up and took the candle.
“I didn’t come here to lose any of my pards, Hickok,” he went on, “and I don’t intend to. We’ve got to find the route Nick traveled when he left, and follow it.”
“We’ll get him back,” averred Wild Bill, with a resolute snap of the jaws, “no matter how much of a ‘plant’ Lawless has down here.”
Thereupon the two stepped back into the main level. Holding his candle in one hand and a stone in the other, each proceeded toward the breast of the passage, tapping on the walls as they went.
This maneuver proved fruitless. The stone walls gave back no hollow sound, and, for all their ears could detect, they might as well have been tapping against a mountain of granite.
Never before had the king of scouts been so deeply perplexed. An outlet from the mine seemed such a simple thing to find, and yet it had baffled him. The whole mystery, in a less matter-of-fact mind than the scout’s, or Wild Bill’s, would have taken on a supernatural aspect.
“I’m up the biggest kind of a stump, Cody,” admitted Wild Bill, “and the more we try to solve the riddle, the higher up I get. The stone in the wall seems to be as solid as Gibraltar, and if there was a hole—even a masked opening—leading to another passage, there would certainly be some kind of a ‘break’ in the side of the level. But there isn’t any break—the walls are continuous.”
“About where, in this level,” said the scout, “would you say Nomad was when he gave that yell?”