Frank Merriwell, Juniors, Golden Trail | Page 7

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