“Of course not. Nobody could follow us so fast on foot. There! They are staring after us. I never saw that man before; did you?”
“I don’t remember. He’s not a miner—or, he isn’t in working togs. Give it up, Chet.”
So did Chet. He had something much more important to think of. While the men at the shaft of the Silent Sue were endeavouring to hoist out the rubbish that had fallen into the bottom of the shaft, the young chap believed there was a better chance to get into the lower tunnel of the mine by following the old drift of the abandoned diggings.
In half an hour the two lads reached the mouth of the Crayton shaft. Neither of the boys had been this way for a year.
Something had happened since their last visit to the spot. The old log windlass was overturned, and when they left their horses and ran to the mouth of the shaft they saw that a part of the shoring had given way and hundreds of tons of earth and rock had fallen into the pit, completely choking the way to the old mine.
CHAPTER IV—THE ROCKING STONE
“On, Chet!” gasped Digby Fordham. “This is awful! Isn’t there any other old mine that touches the Silent Sue’s tunnels?”
“Not that I ever heard of,” replied his chum seriously. “This was only a chance, of course; but father spoke of this old mine so recently—”
Chet was staring about the opening in the forest. Like the place at which they had seen the lame Indian boy, it was an abandoned camp. Several other claims had been worked here; but the shafts of the other mines had caved in years and years before.
There was something peculiar about the filling-in of the Crayton shaft. Chet began to scrutinise the vicinity—as Dig said, “sniffing around like a hound on a cold scent.”