The Mystery of the Death Trap Mine - M. V. Carey [34]
“We haven’t gone in far enough yet,” said Jupe. “The sound of those explosions was muffled. Let’s go on to the place where I found the pebble.”
He took the light and led the way to the spot where the tunnel branched out to the right and the left. He turned left without hesitation. “It was about fifty feet from here,” he said, and he paced forward.
Now there was a bigger pile of loose rock and pebbles on the floor of the mine. Above the heap of rubble was a wide hole that had been blasted in one wall. Something glittered at the edge of the cavity.
“Look!” cried Pete. “Gold!”
Jupe stepped forward and held the light close to the tunnel wall. Bright specks glinted under the torch’s beam. “Amazing!” said Jupe. With his fingernails he dug a bit of shining yellow metal out of the hard earth. He turned the light full on his prize and stared at it.
“So Mrs. Macomber was wrong!” said Allie. “There is gold in the mine!”
Suddenly all four of them froze.
Very faintly, from somewhere outside the mine, came the sound of what could have been a shot, or perhaps a car backfiring.
“Someone’s coming!” whispered Pete.
“We’d better scram!” said Allie. “I don’t want to get caught in here again!”
Jupe put the bit of gold into his pocket and they hurried toward the main tunnel. The timbered entrance now showed only as a faint square of light. When they glimpsed it, Jupe snapped off the flashlight and they groped toward the fresh air, stumbling up the slanting floor of the tunnel. At the mine entrance, Jupe stopped them.
The dog still lay in the clearing, almost invisible in the gathering dusk. A car screeched to a halt outside the fence. Allie and the boys watched two men get out of the car.
“Okay, Gasper,” said one of the men. “Grab a rock or something and we’ll get that padlock off the gate.”
“No sweat, Manny,” said the second, in a rasping wheeze. “I’ll shoot it off!”
“You crazy?” said the first man. “Somebody hears you and that fat-cat sheriff’ll be up here. Get a rock.”
Even from where they stood, yards from the gate, Allie and the boys could hear the laboured breathing of the man called Gasper.
“Jupe! Pete whispered. “That sound. It’s the prowler who was in the barn! The one who took a whack at me with the machete! He breathed like that!”
They shrank back into the darkness of the mine tunnel.
“What are we going to do?” whispered Allie. “If we try to make a run for it, those creeps are sure to see us — and I don’t think they’re here on a friendly visit! There’s not a soul up here tonight — or back at the ranch!”
They could hear the man called Gasper pounding at the padlock on Thurgood’s gate.
The lock dropped to the ground and the gate was pushed open.
“If it’s still here, it’s probably in the house,” croaked Gasper.
The two men crossed the clearing to Thurgood’s cabin. “Might not be here at all,” said his partner. “He’s had plenty of time to stash it someplace else.”
“If we don’t find it here, we can check out the mine,” said Gasper.
“And if we don’t find it there,” Manny replied, “we wait for that crumb to come back and we force him to tell us what he did with it!”
The two men laughed as they went into Thurgood’s cabin.
Allie almost squealed. “They’re going to catch us in here,” she cried. “We’ve got to try and make it to the ranch. We can call the sheriff from there.”
“Are you crazy, Allie?” whispered Pete. “Those guys are armed!”
“But she’s right,” said Bob. “We’ve got to do something!”
Jupe crawled to the entrance of the mine and looked out. A bucket of liquid stood nearby, next to the rickety shack that Thurgood had padlocked some days before. Jupe crept forward and sniffed the bucket, then looked at the tinder-dry wood of the shack.
He slipped back to the entrance of the tunnel. “The Mexicans left a bucket of paint thinner next to Thurgood’s shack,” he reported. “If we set fire to the shack someone in town is sure to see it and alert the