Frank Merriwell, Juniors, Golden Trail | Page 8

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