“Any old day the odds of five to one make me take a back seat,” said he, “I hope some friend will hand me a good one and tell me to wake up. I’m going to hide my hand, Crawling Bear. This is a case of find out what’s doing, and then make a get-away on the q. t.—in case I can’t help some unfortunate in distress. You look out for the horses; and, if I can’t take care of myself, then I’m ready to be planted, for it will be high time.”
With that, Wild Bill stepped to the foot of the ore-dump and climbed carefully to the plank platform.
An empty ox-hide bucket stood on the platform, off to one side, but there was no windlass for hoisting the bucket, and there did not seem to be any ladders for getting down into the shaft. All this contributed still further to Wild Bill’s perplexity, and at the same time increased his determination to investigate.
But, if there were no ladders for getting into the mine, there was a rope. The upper end of the rope was made fast to the edge of the opening in the middle of the platform.
The Laramie man peered down into the shaft. The blackness was intense, and he could see nothing, not even the gleam of a candle.
“Can’t tell whether the shaft is fifty feet deep or five hundred,” he muttered, “but it’s a cinch that none of the men who came here on those five horses are anywheres around the foot of the shaft. If they were, they’d jump a piece of lead at me. With my head over the hole, like this, I’m a good target. Now to go down.”
For an instant Wild Bill sat on the platform, his feet dangling over the abyss; then, slowly letting himself down, he grabbed the rope and began to slide.
The shooting continued, the echoes booming louder in Wild Bill’s ears and increasing his curiosity. Wild Bill was down fifty feet before he touched bottom. The shaft was not so deep, after all.
Leaving the lower end of the rope, he groped his way around the shaft wall until he found the opening of the level. In traversing the level, he dropped to his hands and knees, and crawled.
The level crooked to right and left, and, after Wild Bill had covered something like fifty feet of it, he began to hear voices, and to see a glow of light in the distance.