“I can’t see any. This brute seems to be alone.”
“How about taking a shot at him?”
“What’s the use? Even if I did kill him, we’d only run into the rest of them when we went out into the cave again. I’m not going to use this gun again unless I absolutely have to.”
The brothers continued their weird journey. The tunnel was damp and chilly. The floor was rocky and uneven, and Frank was in constant dread lest he trip and fall. It would be all up with them then. The wolf would not lose a second in taking advantage of such an opportunity. So, stepping backward, they retreated farther and farther down the passage, watching the grey form that constantly followed, never gaining on them, but never falling back.
“I wonder how long this tunnel is?” Frank muttered.
“Can’t last forever,” said Joe, with an attempt at cheerfulness. “I think I feel a draft of cold air at my back.”
“It doesn’t lead outside, that’s certain. If it did it would be sloping upward.”
There was a low snarl from the wolf. It advanced farther into the circle of light. The brute had evidently decided that the light was not particularly dangerous, and was growing bolder.
Frank tightened his grip on the revolver. The animal was preparing for a rush.
The gaunt grey form gathered itself together and came directly at him.
Frank pressed the trigger.
The revolver crashed forth, awakening thunderous echoes in the narrow tunnel. The wolf gave vent to a howl of pain and fury, but although its onward course was checked for a moment and it swerved to one side it did not fall back. The bullet had not found a vital spot. Maddened by pain, the animal came on again.
The boys scrambled back. The wolf leaped. Frank flung himself to one side and the great body brushed against him. He struck out with the revolver and felt the weapon strike against flesh. Again he pulled the trigger, with the barrel of the weapon directly against the animal’s hide, and then he sprang farther back into the tunnel.
Behind him he heard a shout. It seemed curiously far away. He retreated another step.
His foot did not find the solid rock. Instead, he stepped back into space. For an instant he wavered, clutching vainly at the air. Then he lost his balance, staggered backward, and then felt himself falling on downward into utter darkness.
XXI
Underground
Frank Hardy could not have fallen more than ten or twelve feet, but he had the sensation of having dropped from an enormous height. The unexpectedness of it took his breath away, and when he finally crashed into a heap of earth and gravel with a jolt that jarred every bone in his body he could only lie there in the darkness and wonder that he was still alive.
Then, to his relief, came a voice from close at hand.
“Are you all right, Frank?”
“That you, Joe?”
“You didn’t expect to find anybody else down here, did you?” asked Joe, with a chuckle.
“I’m all right. No bones broken. How about you?”
“I’m shaken up a bit, but I’m all right. Thank goodness I didn’t land on my head.”
“What on earth happened?”
“We must have stepped right back into the main shaft of the mine. That passage we were in was a drift that went right through to the cave. We’re at the bottom of the shaft now, I guess.”
Frank had still retained his grasp of the flashlight. Fortunately it had not been broken in the fall and when he switched it on the welcome glow of light again pervaded their prison.
High above them they could see a patch of snow-white sky, sharply outlined by the rectangular shaft-head. A crude ladder ascended the side of the shaft. They could see the black patch that marked the entrance to the drift from which they had fallen, and from it emanated growls and snarls of rage and pain.
“That beast won’t follow us any farther. I guess that was why the wolves were so doubtful about chasing us in there. They steer clear of that tunnel,” ventured Frank.
“Lucky for us we hit the shaft when we did. That wolf would have been all over us in two more seconds. He’d have made mincemeat out of both of us. I thought sure we were done for, and then I stepped back—wow! I thought I was falling clean through the earth.”
“Me, too. I couldn’t imagine what had happened. I thought the bottom of the tunnel had given way on us.”
“Good thing the shaft isn’t any deeper. We’d have saved our lives by escaping from the wolf and broken our necks by falling down the shaft.”
“We’re lucky. But now we’re down here, what are we going to do about it?”
Joe pointed to the ladder.
“We can get to the surface easily enough now.”
“But if this is the main shaft we ought to be able to find our way to the blue room mentioned on that map.”
“No use backing out now that we’ve come this far. I’d almost forgotten what we’d come for.”
Frank got to his feet. He was not seriously injured by the fall, although he had wrenched one knee. But he was able to walk without much difficulty. He explored the bottom of the shaft with the flashlight. Almost directly across from them he found the entrance to the tunnel indicated on the map he had discovered in the outlaw’s notebook.
“Here we are!”
To refresh his memory he drew the notebook from his pocket again and the boys studied the map once more.
“This passage leads to the big chamber, by the looks of it. And when we get there we find two passages leading out of it. We follow this one,” Frank indicated the tunnel marked X. “And from there we get to a smaller chamber. We follow a tunnel out of that until we get to what they call the blue room. And there we’ll find the gold.”
“If the outlaws haven’t beaten us to it.”
“Perhaps so.
