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Page 38
"We've been told that he made the trouble," Will agreed, "but we
weren't so very sure of it, after all. At least, we didn't have the
proof. He ought to get twenty years for that!"
"Well, if you keep asking me questions all night," Elmer declared,
"I'll never get the boys up here, and you'll never know why you were
sent here! You can come along with me if you want to."
"But how about this detective?" insisted Sandy.
"We ought to be able to get the boys up here, without letting him know
that we are in the mine," answered Elmer. "We needn't travel with a
fife and drum corps ahead of us, nor even carry any lights down with
us. He's probably working in some inside chamber."
"All right," Will answered, "we've had our trip through the mine
tonight, so we'll let Tommy and Sandy go with you. Are you sure the
boys will come if you ask them to?"
"Sure they'll come!" was the reply.
The two boys drew on their rubber boots with which they had provided
themselves before taking up their quarters in the mine, and which they
had been too excited to use on a previous occasion, and Will loaned a
pair to Elmer, then they started down the ladders.
"It would be something of a joke if we should butt into that detective
now, wouldn't it?" Sandy laughed, as they passed down from the second
level.
"I shouldn't consider it much of a joke," replied Tommy. "We took a
lot of pains to make him think we'd gone out of town!"
As the boys walked softly down the center gangway they heard a fall of
rock which seemed to come from the passage next north. This
passageway was connected by the main one with a cross-heading,
situated perhaps three hundred feet from the shaft.
"I don't know much about mines," whisper Elmer as the boys stopped and
listened to the clatter of the rocks as they settled down on the floor
of the cavern, "but that sounds to me a whole lot like a fall from the
roof. I hope the boys are not injured."
The boys walked faster until they came to the cross-passage and then
turned to the right. Just as they left the main gangway, they heard
the sound of running feet and directly the distant creaking the ladder
rungs.
"Some one's making a hot-foot for the surface!" exclaimed Tommy.
"That's Ventner!" declared Sandy.
"How do you know that?"
"Because he wears heavy boots. We have rubbers, me and Dick, and
Jimmie and Dick, who are down in the mine, are also wearing rubber
boots!"
"The farther he gets away from the mine, the better it will suit me,"
Elmer broke in. "I wish he'd go away and stay for a hundred years."
"The chances are that he dug away one of the pillars and caused that
drop from the roof," suggested Sandy.
"I guess that's all right, too," Elmer argued. "If he's been digging
around here the way the boys say he has, he's certainly taking chances
on cutting down more than one column. He ought to be fired out of the
mine!"
The boys now came to a chamber across the entrance to which a great
mass of shale had been thrown when the fall from the roof took place.
At first they listened, fearful that they would hear voices of the
lads they were in search of beyond the wall, possibly crushed under
the weight of the of stone. Then they passed along for a short
distance and peered into the chamber over the heap of refuse.
What they saw brought excited exclamations to their lips.
Jimmie and Dick stood in the interior of the chamber, hedged in by
fallen debris. They were swinging their searchlights frantically from
side to side, and, while the boys looked, they began the utterance of
such yells as had never before been heard in that gloomy place.
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