WHO CUT THE STRING?

“Do you suppose he would understand the call of the Beaver Patrol?” asked Sandy. “I’m going to try him, anyway!”

The boy brought his hands together in imitation of the slap of a beaver’s tail on the water, and listened for some reply.

“He’ll understand that if he’s up on Boy Scout literature,” suggested Sandy. “He ought to be wise to the signs of the different patrols if he’s a good Boy Scout.”

There was a short silence, broken only by the constant drip of the water in an adjoining chamber, and then the call of the pack came again, clearly, sharply and apparently only a short distance away.

“What did Mr. Canfield call those two boys we are looking after?” asked Sandy, after waiting a short time for the repetition of the sound.

“Jimmie Maynard and Dick Thompson,” replied Tommy.

Sandy threw out his chest and cried out at the top of his lungs:

“Hello, Jimmie! Hello, Dick!”

The lad’s voice echoed dismally throughout the labyrinth of passages, but there was no other reply. Tommy and Sandy gave the call of the Beaver Patrol repeatedly, but the call of the Wolf pack was heard no more.

“I’ll bet it’s some trick!” exclaimed Sandy after waiting in the chamber for a long time in the hope of hearing another call from the boys who were hidden somewhere behind the cribbing.

“What do you mean by trick?” demanded Tommy.

“Why, I mean that some of the breaker boys, out of work because of the stoppage of operations, may have sneaked into the mine on purpose to produce the impression that there are ghosts here.”

“But ghosts wouldn’t be giving signals of the Wolf Pack, would they?” asked Tommy.

“Not unless they were Scouts,” replied the other.

“Oh well, of course the kids would want to test us, wouldn’t they, seeing that we were only boys?”

“Well, we’ve discovered one thing by coming down,” said Tommy, “and that is that there really are people in the mine who have no business here.”

“Then we may as well go back to bed,” advised Sandy.

“Do you know how many corners we’ve turned since we came in here?” asked Tommy.

“About a thousand, I guess,” replied Sandy.

“Yes, and we’d have a fine old time getting out if you hadn’t brought that ball of twine!”

“Tell you what we’ll do,” Sandy said, as the boys turned their faces down the gangway, “we’ll pass around the next shoulder of rock and then shut off our lights. Perhaps the kids who gave the cry of the pack in there will then show their light again.”

“That’s a good idea, too!”

The boys came at length to a brattice, which is a screen, of either wood or heavy cloth, set up in a passage to divert the current of air to a bench where workmen are engaged, and dodged down behind it, first shutting off their lights, of course.

“Now, come on with your old light,” whispered Tommy.

As if in answer to the boy’s challenge, the light showed again, apparently but a few yards away from their hiding place.

A moment later the call of the pack, sounding louder than before, rang through the passage. The boys sprang to their feet and switched on their lights.

“Why don’t you come out and show yourselves?” shouted Tommy.

“I don’t believe you’re Scouts at all!” declared Sandy.

There was no answer. The boys could hear the drip of water and the purring of the current as it crept into a lower gangway, but that was all.

“That settles it for tonight!” exclaimed Tommy. “I’m not going to hang around here waiting for Boy Scouts who don’t respond to signals!”

“That’s me!” agreed Sandy. “We’ll go to bed and think the matter over. There may be some way of trapping those fellows.”

“Suppose it should be Jimmie Maynard and Dick Thompson?” asked Tommy.

“Then we’d have the case closed up in a jiffy!” was the reply.

Before leaving that particular chamber, Tommy selected a large round piece of “gob,” placed it in the center of the open space, and laid another small piece of shale on top of it.

“What are you doing that for?” demanded Sandy.

“Don’t you know your Indian signs?” demanded the boy. “That means ’This is the trail.’ Now I’ll put a stone to the right, and that will tell these imitation Boy Scouts to turn to the right if they want to get out.”

“I guess they can get out if they want to,” suggested Sandy.

Thirty or forty feet further on, where, following the string, the boys turned again, this time to the left, Tommy laid another signal which showed the direction to be taken.

“There,” he said with a grin, “we’ve started them on the right path. If they don’t want to follow it, that isn’t our fault!”

“We must be getting pretty near the shaft,” Sandy said, after the boys had walked for nearly half an hour on the backward track.

“Pull on your string,” suggested Tommy, “and see if it stiffens up like only a short length of it remained out.”

Sandy did as requested, and then dropped to the floor with his searchlight laid along the extension of the cord.

“The other end is loose!” he said in a tone of alarm.

“Loose?” echoed Tommy. “How did it ever get loose?”

Sandy sat down on the floor of the passage and began drawing the cord in, hand over hand.

“I’m going to see if it’s been cut!” he said.

Tommy stepped on the swiftly moving cord and held it fast to the floor.

“You mustn’t draw it in!” he exclaimed. “As long as it lies on the floor as we strung it out, we can follow it without taking any chances. If you pull it in, then it’s all off.”

“I understand!” Sandy agreed. “I didn’t pull much of it in.”

The boys started up the gangway, one of them keeping a searchlight on the white thread of cord.

They seemed to make a great many turns and once or twice Sandy declared that they were walking round and round in a circle.

“I don’t believe the passages run so we could walk around in a circle!” argued Tommy. “That ain’t the way they run passages in mines!”

“I don’t care!” Sandy insisted. “We’ve been turning to the left about all the time, and if you leave it to me, we’ll presently come out in the chamber where we heard the call of the pack!”

“That may be right,” admitted Tommy. “It does seem as if we’d been turning to the left most of the time. Besides,” he went on, “we’ve been walking long enough to have reached the shaft three or four times.”

“And yet,” argued Sandy, “we’ve been following the line of the cord every step. It lies right in the middle of the gangway here, and we’re going the way it points all the time.”

This bit of reasoning seemed to give the boys fresh courage, and they walked on, expecting every moment to come in sight of the frame work which surrounded the shaft. At length, after a long half hour, Tommy stumbled over an obstruction lying in a chamber which somehow seemed strangely familiar. He lifted his foot and gave the obstruction a hearty kick.

“That’s my Indian sign of the trail!” grunted Sandy.

“For the love of Mike!” exclaimed Tommy. “Have we been traveling all this time to come out in this same old hole at last?”

“That’s what we have!” replied Sandy. “If we had paid no attention to the string whatever and followed the rails when we came to the main gang way, we would have been home and in bed by this time!”

“But we didn’t,” grinned Tommy. “We thought we had a cinch on getting out by way of this cord and so we followed that. I don’t see, though,” he continued, “how we came back to this same old chamber by following the cord. That looks queer to me!”

“I’ll tell you how!” replied Sandy. “There’s some gink been walking on ahead of us stringing the cord out for us to follow!”

Tommy sat down on the bottom of the chamber and wrinkled his freckled nose provokingly.

“We’re a couple of easy marks!” he laughed.

“Easy marks is no name for it!”

“Well, what’ll we do now to get out?” Tommy asked. “First thing we know, it’ll be daylight, and then Will and George’ll be calling out the police to find us. We ought to get home before they wake up.”

“I’m willing!” declared Sandy. “I’d like to be in my little bed this minute! I’ve had about enough of this foul air!”

The boys passed along until they came to the second trail sign and then stopped. Tommy pointed down to it with a hand which was not quite steady and looked up into his chum’s face with frightened eyes.

“That’s been moved!” he said.

“How do you know it’s been moved?”

“Because you had the side stone on the other edge.”

“I don’t think I did!” argued Sandy.

The boys puzzled over the situation for a few moments, and then proceeded down the chamber looking for the tramway rails.

They passed from chamber to chamber and finally came to a place where the slope was upward.

“I guess we’ve struck it at last!” Sandy exclaimed.

“But there are no rails here!” Tommy argued.

“Then we’re on the wrong track again,” admitted Sandy.

He bent down to the rock with his searchlight and pointed out evidences that the passage had once been laid with rails.

“When they strip a chamber or a counter gangway,” he said, “they take away the rails. It seems that we are now in a part of the Labyrinth mine which has been worked out.”

“I know what to do!” exclaimed Tommy. “I’ll give the call of the Beaver Patrol and tell those ginks who have been giving the call of the pack that we’re lost! That ought to bring them out of their holes.”

The Beaver call was given time after time, but no reply came.

“Say,” Tommy said after his patience had become exhausted, “I believe it’s daylight. Look at your watch. I left mine in the bed!”

“I left mine in bed, too,” answered Sandy. “I know it is day, because I’m hungry.”