“All right. Let’s go.”
They stamped out the fire and resumed their journey down the mountain. They stayed close together this time, taking no chances on again being separated. As Frank had noticed, the wind had indeed lost much of its fury, although it still howled and blustered on the mountain slope, and the snow still fell steadily in a drifting cloud. The trail was almost obscured by the snowdrifts but Frank was able to find and follow it and they finally reached the place where they had turned off toward the abandoned mine workings several days before.
Here they hesitated.
“What do you think?” Frank asked.
“Now that we’re so close to the mine I think we may as well go on with our search.”
“I was hoping you’d say that. It shouldn’t take us more than an hour or so and it isn’t dark yet. Besides, we have our flashlights.”
“I haven’t mine. But one’s enough. Go ahead. It shouldn’t be hard to find the Lone Tree from here.”
Frank turned off the trail. He headed directly toward the old mine workings they had previously visited and from which he remembered having seen the lone pine tree. The snow was deeper than they had expected and they ploughed through drifts up to the waist. They went on, however, and in a short while reached the abandoned mine of their harrowing experience underground. Here they paused.
“The lone tree was over to the right, I think,” said Joe.
They peered through the storm. They could see nothing but drifting snow and the dull masses of the rocks. A shift in the wind raised the curtain of storm for a moment and then, like a gloomy sentinel, they saw the tall pine tree, solitary against the bleak background of grey.
“That’s it!”
Now that their goal was definitely in sight they felt invigorated, and they hastened on through the snow toward the tree with new vitality. Forgotten for the moment was their weariness and exhaustion, the cold and the snow, in the lure of the gold that they felt sure lay somewhere in the neighborhood of that lonely tree.
Stumbling and plunging through the snow, they reached their goal at last. The tree creaked and swayed in the wind, and as they stood beneath it they saw that they were standing on the verge of a deep pit that seemed to have been scooped out of the earth by giant hands. There were a few ramshackle ruins of old mine buildings near by. The roofs had long since fallen in and the buildings sagged drunkenly. At the far side of the bottom of the pit, clearly discernible against the snow, they saw the wide mouth of a cave.
“That must be the shaft opening,” said Frank. “We’re on the track now.”
The boys descended into the pit. The going was precarious, for the rocks were slippery and the snow concealed crevices and holes, so that they were obliged to proceed cautiously. But at length they reached the bottom and made their way across to the mouth of the cave.
Frank produced his flashlight as he prepared to enter.
“Stick close behind,” he advised his brother. “We don’t know what we’re liable to run into here.”
The snow flung itself upon them and the wind shrieked with renewed fury as they left the unsheltered pit and entered the half darkness of the cave mouth. It was as though they were entering a new world. They had become so accustomed to the roaring of the gale and the sweep of the storm that the interior of the passage seemed strangely peaceful and still.
The flashlight sliced a brilliant gleam of light from the blackness ahead.
Step by step they advanced across the hard rock. The dampness and cold became more pronounced. As they went on the passage widened and in a few minutes they found themselves in a huge chamber in the earth, a chamber that extended far on into darkness, and they could not see the opposite walls.
A curious rustling sound attracted their attention as soon as they entered the place, and Frank stood still.
“What was that?”
They remained motionless and silent. Away off in the darkness of this subterranean chamber they could hear a scuffling and rustling, and sounds that the boys judged were caused by pattering feet. Frank directed the beam of the flashlight toward them, but the light fell short and they could see nothing.
They advanced several paces. The rustling sounds became multiplied. Then, suddenly, Frank caught sight of two gleaming pinpoints of light glowing from the blackness.
“What’s that light?” asked Joe.
“I don’t know. I’m going closer.”
Frank stepped forward again. As he did so, instead of two pinpoints of light, he saw two more, then two more, until at least a dozen of those strange glowing green spots shone from the darkness, reflected in the glow from the flashlight.
“Animals,” he said quietly to Joe.
At the same instant he heard a low, menacing snarl.
The glowing greenish lights began to move rapidly to and fro. Into the radiance of the flashlight shot a lean, grey form that disappeared as swiftly as it came.
A prolonged and wicked snarling rose from the gloom. Frank glanced to one side and saw that two of the greenish lights had moved until they were circling behind him. He leaped back.
“We’d better get out of here!” he said. “Those are wolves.”
But when the boys turned to retrace their steps they were confronted by a lean form that barred their way to the cave entrance, and in the glow of the flashlight they saw two greenish eyes that glowed fiendishly and two rows of sharp white teeth bared in defiance.
XX
Down the Shaft
Frank Hardy swung the flashlight, and the wolf before them sprang back, snarling ferociously, into the darkness. The pattering of feet at the back of the huge cavern became more insistent. The boys were conscious of those greenish eyes all about them. The wolves were circling around the cave.
Another wolf joined the animal that
