The Argosy, Vol. 84 No. 1 — page 116: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

106 the Superior region, but in the low-grade ores of the Southwest he realized that such a deposit could only be a freak of nature, almost supernatural in its origin. Yet the light of the candle continued at each fur- ther step to fall upon masses of almost pure ore! So excited had he been in his discoveries that he had not noticed how low his light was burning, until a larger drop of hot wax than usual falling upon his hand caused him to look down and see that there remained but a fraction of an inch of candle in his holder. He regretfully turned, and was making his way back to the ‘“ drift” by which he had entered, when his attention was caught by a series of taps below him. He started, his nerves unstrung by the sights he had seen. Then he listened intently. In steady, even succession came the taps, as of steady drumming with fingers on a window-pane. He lay down and put his ear to the ground, realizing that the sounds were either supernatural or that human beings were working not very far” away. He knew from his experiences with tun- nel gangs that sounds will carry through solid rock for phenomenal distances. The sound might be close at hand or a hundred feet away. Suddenly the floor upon which he lay cracked and gave. He made a dcesperaie plunge in an effort to reach safety, but without avail. His hands, outstretched in desperate groping, caught nothing, and he fell. There flashed through his mind the picture of the crushed skulls that he had seen in the bottom of the shaft, and then, with a plunge, he slid into space. So quickly that he had hardly had time to realize his sensations in falling, he landed on solid reck. As he picked him- self up, bruised but uninjured, he realized that he could not have dropped more than ten feet. 3 Crawling on hands and knees in the dark—as in his fall he had dropped his THE ARGOSY. candle—he suddenly put his hand on cold steel. He slid his fingers along. the metal and it continued. It was a rail. ‘Cautiously he groped on his other side and felt there another rail. They were rusty, showing that the drift was an abandoned one. “T must have fallen into mine work- ings,” he told himself, “‘ and modern ones at that; but where on earth can they have come from?” Suddenly he thought of Moran’s story about the direction of the tunnel of the Esperanza mine. He whistled softly to himself. ‘They must be getting their ore from directly’ below the I. O. U., instead of following their own vein. No wonder Symmonds and his crowd are rich! Itisa perfect Bonanza. Symmonds must have got the story of the great deposit from some Indian, and figured out where it must lie. He only missed it by a few feet, at that!”’ He halted and pondered perplexedly as to his next step. “Tf I come out into the Esperanza workings, I won’t be much better off than I was before. Knowing I was on to their secret, that gang would undoubtedly make short work of me. Still, it seems there is nothing to do but keep on and trust to luck.” Presently he came to the end of the drift into which he had fallen, and reached a point where three other galleries con- verged. He hesitated, debating with him- self which one to follow. : He did not hear the soft, catlike step that crept up behind him, and his first warning of danger was the flash of an electric pocket-lamp full in his face, blind- ing him. He flung out his arms instinc- tively, but too late. Some supersense told him of the shadow above his head, as with a sweeping blow a three-foot drill, swung by powerful arms, crashed down, beating aside his arms as though they had been paper. He toppled and fell like a log. (To Be Continued. ) ECOPMIGLOOOKS (E@)