Chapter XIX: Searching for Lost Mountain

If the three boys attempted to flee from the burning rookery they would of course be discovered and possibly fired upon by that grim watcher.

"Frank, do you reckon he guessed we were squatting up here and means to give us a chance to be roasted?" asked the now thoroughly alarmed Paul, not so capable of meeting trouble coolly, as Frank Allen had always shown himself to be.

"I hardly believe it's quite as bad as that," the other replied. "After firing the shack, he's felt inclined to hold up and watch how his work gets to moving."

"Then you think he may skip out in time to let us drop out of a window or slip down those ricketty stairs, do you?"

"Let's hope so, anyhow, Paul."

Lanky, however, was almost boiling over with poorly suppressed disgust.

"Huh! does that Zeke think we're a bunch of Thanksgiving turkeys that he starts a fire under our feet, which, given a little free scope is going to make this place feel like a Dutch oven? I object to being finished in such a cheap way."

He moved his gun menacingly as he said this.

"Do you mean you want to get a crack at Zeke, and tumble him off his pony out there?" queried Paul.

"Well, maybe it'd do the job just as well if I shot the cayuse instead," Lanky suggested, drawing the line at taking human life, something that so far in his existence he had never tried to do.

"Hold your horses, Lanky," advised Frank. "He may be going in another minute or two, and it'll be some little time before that blaze can reach us. As a last resort, if all else fails, I'll agree to let you shoot at Zeke to cripple him or his bronc so that he'll not be able to ride away to warn Yesson, or, on the other hand, harm us here."

Three minutes more passed. So worked up were Lanky Wallace and Paul Bird that it seemed double that time to them.

The fire downstairs was now roaring, and the eyes of the boys began to smart because of the fumes of acrid smoke that ascended the open stairs.

"Oh, bully! Bully! He's whirled his pony around and is going off on a gallop!" announced Paul.

"About time, if he wanted to save his bacon; because I'd have got a bead on his pony in another minute," Lanky said in tones that breathed both jubilation and threats. "Me for the window and a long jump!"

"Take things coolly, Lanky," came from Frank. "You may break a leg if you go over in a hurry. The fire hasn't done much on this side of the house so far, and we can take our own time in getting down. Since the stairs are all ablaze, of course our only road is by way of the window. Here's a rope on this old bed mattress. If it's strong enough we can make good use of it."

A test proved this to be a fact, so Frank insisted that Paul go first, to be followed by Lanky Wallace. Then he himself left the room. His last glimpse of the interior of the upper story of the doomed hotel showed him that hungry tongues of flame were beginning to flash through the open doorway, as though reaching out for victims.

Once safely on the ground, the boys moved back, since the heat of the burning structure made it uncomfortable.

"Bully bonfire, all right!" declared Lanky. "Wonder if it's bound to tackle any of these other ghosts of shacks and clean off the whole of Gold Fork?"

"Let's hope not," Frank told him. "If there's any danger that way, we've got to get busy and hustle our stores out of the cabin where we hid the lot."

"You said something that time, Frank," declared Lanky. "After all, I'm not hankering for a diet of grizzly bear steaks, wolf chops, or gopher hash," and he looked at Paul with a sparkle in his eyes.

"Lanky," put in Frank, "you do love to stuff any gullible comrade, whenever the opportunity arises."

It turned out that fortune favored the boys in some ways. First of all, there was an utter absence of wind, so that the fire did not sweep wildly out toward the other dry and flimsy structures. Then again the recent downpour, called by Jerry a cloudburst, had thoroughly saturated the shacks.

Some three of those nearest the former hotel did succumb to the tremendous heat and burst into blaze but the boys saw they could not in turn communicate with the adjoining ones, since a wide space came between, over which the flames could not possibly jump unless a wind arose, something very unlikely to happen.

"Reckon that smoke will bring our folks back hot-footed," Lanky suggested, watching the billowing volumes soaring straight upward just before the utter collapse of the once busy hotel.

"They'll be all balled up trying to guess what's happened here at the mining camp," added Paul.

It came to pass that such was the case. Something like an hour afterwards Mr. Wallace and his two companions were seen coming on a run, and looking more than anxious.

"No harm done, Dad!" called out Lanky, to relieve his father's mind.

"How did that fire start, son?" asked the other, looking dubiously at Lanky, who, however, shook his head vigorously as he replied:

"Not this time, Dad! It happened to be a man going by the name of Zeke--don't know the rest, because we didn't hear it mentioned."

"Zeke Spavin, I'd judge," put in Zander Forbes. "Was he a big brutish-looking fellow with a shiny bald top-piece?"

"Yes."

"Well, he belongs over with the Double Z outfit. Tell us what you've run across since we pulled out."

The story was soon told, and the boys found themselves praised for having handled a delicate situation so cleverly.

"What do you reckon, Zander," asked the curious and wondering Lanky, "that big gump had hidden down there in the cellar of the old hotel that he wanted burned forever from any prying eyes?"

The puncher squinted his eyes and frowned before giving his opinion.

"Course, I don't know for sure, and I wouldn't be bothered digging in the ashes of this shack just to satisfy my curiosity. But as Jerry here will remember, some years ago there was talk around this section to the effect that Zeke Spavin had made way with another puncher named Hick Davis."

"They was seen together jest before Hick he disappeared," Jerry took up the tale; "an' a heap of us allers did b'lieve Zeke an' his pal must hev hed words, went firin' mad, clinched, an' thet Hick he got his. Mebbe now Zeke, bein' clost to this hyah place, done buried his man in the cellar o' the hotel thar."

"That would seem to explain his scared way of looking down into the cellar through the trapdoor in the floor," Frank observed. "And thinking he'd have an easier mind if all evidence was destroyed, the notion to burn down the hotel came to him. That was why he left his hat behind."

"What luck did you have, Dad? Found that Lost Mountain, I hope," said Lanky, after some further talk about the fire.

"I'm sorry to say we didn't meet with much success, son. But we've decided to go on a new track to-morrow, and hope for better luck."

They found a good place to make camp, avoiding the vicinity of the deserted town, lest their enemies return on some account and give them trouble. The ponies were not forgotten, and both Mr. Wallace and Zander admitted that Jerry's natural corral was the finest freak of nature they had ever seen.

Another day dawned, and once more the three men set out. It was a long day to the boys. Lanky put in a portion of his time in fishing for trout in a noisy stream of icy water that ran down the mountainside not far away.

When he came back about noon he carried a string of the fattest and freshest speckled trout Frank and Paul had ever seen.

"Game fighters, every one of 'em, in the bargain!" declared the fisherman. "You must go along with me this afternoon, boys, and we'll lay in enough to feed the whole bunch."

This they did, and with such success that the memory of that day's sport would remain with the young sportsmen as a fragrant memory.

"We sure must ask permission to get busy ourselves to-morrow," said Lanky, as they once more made camp. "If the men are knocked out again to-day it'd be only fair to give us a chance to best them. Our vacation's getting along, and soon we'll be on our way back to Columbia, to spend the rest of this blooming summer."

When Mr. Wallace listened to the appeal from Lanky, he agreed that since the three chums had had so much to do with finding the two maps and advancing the spark of their common cause, it should be as they wished.

Paul, however, was to be grievously disappointed, for his ankle, which he had sprained on first coming to Rockspur Ranch, began to trouble him again.

"Hard luck, Paul," Frank told him, on taking a look at the painful joint. "You've gone and knocked that ankle against a root or a rock, and if you're wise you'll lay low for a couple of days."

So when the others started forth with fair hopes of accomplishing something worth while, poor Paul was left to tend camp.

"Be sure and make your way up to the corral along toward noon," Lanky told him: "so as to see that our ponies are O.K.--that is, if your ankle lets you limp that far."

"No trouble about it, I guess," returned the chagrined Paul, who naturally did not like to be left behind when his chums were going to be in harness and do some exploring.

"Cook yourself a fat lunch, too," advised Lanky, feeling sorry for the disappointed boy. "It'll help pass the hours away. At most, we expect to show up some time before sundown. By-by! Keep an eye out for those tough men, though I don't believe they mean to return here for days, if ever."

So Frank and Lanky went off, never dreaming that they were fated to pass through another wonderful experience before again setting eyes on the chum they left behind.

Lanky and Frank learned just where the others had done most of their looking for the so-called Lost Mountain, in the depths of which, they understood, was the five-fingered cave that Josh Kinney used to visit regularly, to replenish his depleted treasury by a fresh haul from his deposit of gold nuggets.

Before leaving the camp Lanky and Frank, between them, had laid out a plan of campaign. Following this they now set off on a tangent with the course taken a short time before by Mr. Wallace, Jerry Brime and Zander Forbes.

"We'll try out our scheme," Lanky declared later on, as they continued to walk along; "and then if it fails to bring results, why, to-morrow we can skirmish over in the region they've been combing day after day."

The morning passed, and so far the boys had not run across a single thing to give them encouragement.

"We don't seem to be getting anywhere," observed Frank.

"Let's swing more to the left, along this dip in the mountain," suggested Lanky. "Then we'll be gradually getting back to camp, and at the same time nearing the region where dad and his gang are working.

"It's mighty wild and leery looking over in that quarter," observed Frank. "Looks to me as though Nature had tried to turn things upside down many a time, in days long passed. Been landslides, too, that have changed the whole face of the country, carrying acres of trees and rocks down the mountain."

"That's one reason," observed the other eagerly, "I want to hunt there for the Lost Mountain which, you know, we decided was only a big mound. Remember, we figured it out from certain marks on the map that they stood for landslides? Let's go, Frank."

"A snack first, for I'm hungry, and then we're off," came the reply.

"All right. I've never yet declined to eat," laughed Lanky.

The boys found that the going became more difficult as one hour, and then two hours crept past. Still Lanky seemed to be growing more and more confident.

"Let me tell you, Frank!" he said later on. "Right now I firmly believe we're a whole lot closer to Lost Mountain than dad has ever been in three days' search. Why, any one of the several big humps we've run across might turn out to be the seat of Kinney's find."

"But, somehow," interjected Frank, who had been gazing anxiously heavenward, "I don't like the looks of the sky with all those black wind clouds scudding up so fast. We are bound to get some kind of a gale before a great while."

"Shucks! it may be only a wind storm," jeered Lanky.

"Maybe. But a wind storm can do as much harm sometimes as anything on this earth."

Five minutes afterwards an ominous roaring sound that chilled the blood in their veins came to their ears. The roaring grew in depth and intensity.