“You can’t get down there,” repeated the lame Indian, but stepping out of the way when Dig urged Poke along the trail. “Why not?” asked Chet again. “You can’t get down there,” said the Indian for a third time, and then he turned and hobbled back toward the shack. “You can’t get any sense out of _him_,” grumbled Dig, in disgust. “He’s got some bug in his head. Maybe he thinks this whole mountain belongs to him because it used to belong to his tribe. Old Scarface told me this mountain was ‘bad medicine’ and nobody used to come here but the Indian medicine men in the old days. You couldn’t hire Scarface to come up here.” The two white boys were riding steadily on over the rough trail. Chet kept looking back at the abandoned camp, for he was puzzled. He wondered what John Peep could have meant. “There!” he exclaimed suddenly. “See that?” “See what?” demanded his chum, twisting his neck in order to look behind him. “There’s a man with that fellow—a white man.” “With the lame Indian?” queried Digby. “Why, so there is! Funny! Can’t be one of the boys following us?” “Of course not. Nobody could follow us so fast on foot. There! They are staring after us. I never saw that man before; did you?” “I don’t remember. He’s not a miner—or, he isn’t in working togs. Give it up, Chet.” So did Chet. He had something much more important to think of. While the men at the shaft of the Silent Sue were endeavouring to hoist out the rubbish that had fallen into the bottom of the shaft, the young chap believed there was a better chance to get into the lower tunnel of the mine by following the old drift of the abandoned diggings. In half an hour the two lads reached the mouth of the Crayton shaft. Neither of the boys had been this way for a year. Something had happened since their last visit to the spot. The old log windlass was overturned, and when they left their horses and ran to the mouth of the shaft they saw that a part of the shoring had given way and hundreds of tons of earth and rock had fallen into the pit, completely choking the way to the old mine. CHAPTER IV—THE ROCKING STONE “On, Chet!” gasped Digby Fordham. “This is awful! Isn’t there any other old mine that touches the Silent Sue’s tunnels?” “Not that I ever heard of,” replied his chum seriously. “_This_ was only a chance, of course; but father spoke of this old mine so recently—” Chet was staring about the opening in the forest. Like the place at which they had seen the lame Indian boy, it was an abandoned camp. Several other claims had been worked here; but the shafts of the other mines had caved in years and years before. There was something peculiar about the filling-in of the Crayton shaft. Chet began to scrutinise the vicinity—as Dig said, “sniffing around like a hound on a cold scent.” “No, sir!” muttered Chet. “It is not a cold scent.” “Heh?” growled Digby. “There’s been somebody here lately.” “Well?”