Dig looked at Chet and scratched his head.
“What gets my goat,” he muttered, “is how that redskin talks one minute like a college professor and the next like Poor Lo with his face painted and a dirty blanket trailing at his heels. What do you think of him, anyway?”
“I think he has saved the lives of father and the men with him,” replied Chet earnestly. “Come on, Dig! We’re going to get them out.”
Only a thin shell of earth and rock separated the bottom of the shaft down which the trio had come from the old mining tunnel. Whoever had burst the wall through must have known just where the tunnel lay and must have been aware of its nearness to the ancient watercourse.
The loose earth was dropping in this short passage; but the drift from the Crayton shaft was well timbered with hewn oak. A single wide plank had been knocked out of the shoring to make an entrance into the tunnel.
Down here in the heart of the mountain the planking had neither rotted nor become dry and punky. The timbers all seemed just as good as when the miners had put them in.
“Come on, Dig!” repeated Chet, hurrying along the tunnel. “We can’t get them out any too quickly.”
“Where are you going to dig?” queried his chum.
“Right at the end, of course. Father said he thought the Number Two tunnel of the Silent Sue passed by the end of this drift.”
John Peep said nothing, but held the lantern and let Chet and Dig take the lead. They came to the end of the old passage after walking some distance. Here some recent excavating had undoubtedly been done. There was no rubbish in the way and they could attack at once the end wall.