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Frank Merriwell, Junior's, Golden Trail, a novel by Burt L. Standish |
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Chapter 3. Porter Shows His Teeth |
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_ CHAPTER III. PORTER SHOWS HIS TEETH It was eight o'clock in the evening when Merry, Clancy, and Ballard reached the mine and went hunting for the office of Pardo, the superintendent. The surface activities of a big gold mine, in full operation at night, are as weird as they are interesting. The boys were deeply impressed as they looked down into the valley where the mining, milling, and cyaniding were going on. The stamp mill, where the ore was pounded to powder and robbed of its gold, was a huge, ramshackle structure. Although it had a framework of heavy timbers, yet the strong skeleton was but loosely covered with boards. Through wide cracks and many gaps in the sides of the building a flood of light poured out, and the thunder of a hundred stamps filled the camp. Glimmering lights dotted the shadowy depths of the valley--some shining through the windows of rough dwellings and others moving about in the hands of workers. From the open door of, a blacksmith shop poured a yellow glow from a forge, and against the roar of the stamps arose the musical clink of hammer on anvil. This blacksmith shop happened to be the first building the boy passed on entering the camp. They stopped and asked the smith where they would find the superintendent's office. The brawny fellow turned from the anvil, stepped to the door, and pointed. "There's the super's office, younker," he said to Frank, "where ye see them two lights close together. Mebby he's there, an' mebby he's over to town; anyways, the assistant super is on deck." A person had to shout in order to make himself heard in the steady tumult of the mill. Frank bawled his thanks, and he and his two comrades pressed on toward the twin lights indicated by the blacksmith. These lights, it was presently discovered, came through two windows of a small office building. A man was sitting out in front, tilted comfortably back in a chair and smoking a pipe. He was a vague figure in the shadows, and the visitors could not see very much of him. "Is this Mr. Pardo's office?" Frank inquired, stepping close to the man and lifting his voice. "You've struck it," was the sociable rejoinder. "Are you Mr. Pardo, the superintendent?" "Strike two, my lad." "Well, my name's Merriwell, and I--" "And you've come here for a talk with that old hassayamper, Nick Porter!" finished Pardo. "Mr. Bradlaugh has put me next." The super laughed. "I suppose you know what a brilliant talker the prospector is?" Unless violently agitated, about the only audible sound Porter ever made was a grunt. "We know all about that," Frank answered. "Well," continued the super, "after the way he went off the handle in Gold Hill he seems to be less talkative than usual. And less audible," he added. "Whenever he bobs up in Ophir he makes it a rule to hang out in this camp, mainly because one of our crusherman on the night shift is an old friend of his. But he's a crusty old curmudgeon, and I never hanker much to have him around. He's up in the head of the mill with Joe Bosley now. Come on, Merriwell, and I'll show you and your friends where to find this precious prospector." The obliging superintendent got out of his comfortable chair and started along a camp trail that led up a steep incline. Along the top of the rise showed one side of the mill glowing ruddily against the night sky. Here there was a long, elevated platform upon which ore from the mine was unloaded. A man could be seen moving spectrally around and shoveling ore into a crusher set in the mill wall. Pardo paused, halfway up the low hill and drew Merriwell toward him. "That's Bosley, the crusherman," said he. "He'll tell you where you can find Porter. Bring the prospector to my office, if you like. It isn't quite so noisy as the mill, and you can talk to better advantage." The super turned and went back. Frank and his friends moved on to the ore platform, jumped to the top of it, and yelled their query at Bosley. "Nick?" the crusherman bawled, leaning for a moment on his shovel, and appraising the boys as well as he could. "Oh, he's communin' with himself in the feed loft. Right through that hole," he finished, pointing to an opening in the wall, "and down the steps." Frank led the way through the opening, and, at the foot of the steps, he and his chums found themselves in a small inferno. The bright, shimmering stems of twenty batteries, each of five stamps, were marking time before their eyes like, a row of steel soldiers. Each stamp weighed eight hundred and fifty pounds, and it rose and fell ninety-five times to the minute. The uproar was steady and deafening. Ore feeders were shoveling crushed ore into the stamp hoppers. Frank's eyes ranged over the sweating, seminude, powerful figures as they worked. He could see nothing of Nick Porter. While Frank's eyes were searching the loft, Clancy nudged him with an elbow. Frank turned, and Clancy made signs and pointed. Looking in the direction indicated by Clancy's finger, Frank saw the slouching form of Porter, the prospector. He was sitting on a keg in an angle of the wall. He was leaning back against the boards behind him, a cob pipe between his teeth. His eyes, peering out of the jungle of beard that covered his face, were fixed speculatively on the three boys. Merry immediately stepped to the prospector's side. "Hello, Porter!" he yelled in his ear. The prospector probably grunted, although Frank could hear nothing. "I want to talk with you for a few minutes," Merry went on, in a manner calculated to disarm any suspicions Porter may have had. "Come up to the super's office, will you?" He stepped back. The prospector sat still on the keg for a moment, then slowly knocked the ashes from his pipe and stood up. Frank was congratulating himself that Porter was to make for Pardo's office without any further persuasion; but in this he was mistaken. Clancy stood on the prospector's right, Merry in front of him, and Ballard on the left--between the spot where, Porter was standing and the opening that led into the feed loft. The prospector slipped his pipe into his pocket, moving in a slow, sluggish way that suggested weariness. He was not weary, however. Suddenly, without warning of any sort, he put out one arm and threw Clancy sideways, so that he fell over a heap of crushed stone. Another moment and Porter had leaped for a flight of stairs and had vanished downward into the body of the mill. It was all so quickly done that Frank was taken by surprise. The thought flashed through his mind that Porter, unless he knew something about Professor Borrodaile and suspected why the boys were there, would not be showing his teeth in that fashion. An instant after the prospector had disappeared down the stairs, Frank jumped after him. Ballard followed close on Frank's heels; and Clancy, hastily picking himself up, stifled an exclamation of anger and rushed after Ballard. The stairs led down to the floor where the boxes were placed, and where the plates, whose silver recovered the gold from the ore, stretched the length of the mill. Amalgamators and batterymen were going and coming through all the pounding racket of this part of the establishment, but the prospector had somehow managed to lose himself. So suddenly and completely had Porter disappeared that it seemed little short of magical. Frank took three or four steps from the foot of the stairs, peering along the row of plates covered with dirty water from the battery boxes, and looking back into the shadowy recesses under the ore loft. He was asking himself if Porter would have had time to get away into the darkness back of the batteries, when a red-shirted amalgamator stepped to his side. "Lookin' fer Porter?" he yelled. Frank nodded. "He ducked out o' the door yonder," and the amalgamator, with a jerk of his thumb, indicated an opening that led out into the night. Ballard was nearest the door. He had heard the amalgamator, and whirled like lightning and dashed out of the mill and into the darkness. Frank was tight at his heels, while Clancy brought up the rear of the little file of pursuers. The noise was not so deafening outside the mill, but the boys were blinded temporarily by their quick transition from the bright glow of the mill to the outer gloom. They stared around them, but could see nothing of the prospector. Ballard, however, heard something or other which gave him a clew. "This way!" he shouted. Frank heard his chum's feet swiftly crunching the sand and gravel, and followed the sound. In a moment or two his vision cleared somewhat and he was able to see several rows of huge wooden tanks. A plank incline led to the top of one row, and Ballard could be distinguished racing up the incline. Beyond Ballard, traveling at speed over a plank gangway that spanned the tanktops, was a burly figure silhouetted against the lighter gloom of the night. With a shout to Clancy, Merriwell hustled after Ballard. Those tanks were part of the cyanide plant, wherein the refuse of the mill was treated with deadly cyanide of potassium for recovering what little gold was left after the refuse, or "tailings," had come from the stamp mill. The cyanide plant, presumably, was familiar ground to Porter, whereas the boys had never seen it before. In the gloom the prospector could navigate across the big vats with something like accuracy, while the boys carried on their pursuit at a tremendous disadvantage. Recklessly Ballard ran on. Merriwell called a warning to him, but Ballard either did not hear it or else paid no attention. The form of the prospector, leaping and plunging onward, sprang from one row of vats to another. Each row was a little lower than the row to the north, so that the tiers took on the form of a flight of giant steps. Porter gained the top tier, and stood for a moment on a plank spanning a vat that was three or four times as large as any of the others. Ballard climbed to the same plank. Porter dropped down with a savage, snarling cry. Clinging for a moment to the edge of the tank, he twisted the plank from under Ballard's feet. Ballard dropped with a splash. "Merciful powers!" yelled a voice in wild alarm. "Get him out, quick! That's the solution tank and is filled with cyanide!" Merriwell's heart almost stopped beating. In a gleam of light from the mill he saw the white, drawn face of Pardo peering toward the spot where Ballard was splashing in the deadly cyanide solution. An instant later he bounded to the rescue. _ |
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