Frank Merriwell, Juniors, Golden Trail | Page 9

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.
CHAPTER IV.
A CLOSE CALL.
Just one thing saved Ballard from going over his head into the cyanide solution, and that was this: Porter had not twisted the plank off the rim of the tank, but had manipulated it in such a way as to cause Ballard to lose his footing and drop into the poisonous liquid beneath. As Ballard dropped, he flung out his arms, seized the plank, and so kept head and shoulders out of the cyanide. Had he gone under or swallowed even a few drops of the deadly stuff, that pursuit of the savage prospector would have had a tragic termination. Ballard, kicking around in the solution, was trying to drag himself up on the plank as Merry crept toward him.
"Steady there, Pink!" called Frank. "Don't splash the stuff around, and keep out of it as much as you can. It's a deadly poison."
"Never mind me," cried, Ballard. "Keep after that confounded prospector He'll get away if you don't."
"You first, old chap," Frank answered. "It has a scurvy trick Porter played on you, and--and it might have resulted fatally. Now, then!"
Gripping his chum by the arms, Frank heaved him upward until he was on his knees on the plank.
"Want any help?" came the agitated voice of Clancy, from just below the solution tank.
"No," answered Merriwell, "we're making it all right."
"Drop him over the side," called Pardo, "here, over in this direction. There's a tank of clear water next to the solution vat, and the quicker your friend rinses that cyanide out of his clothes, the better."
"Oh, hang the cyanide!" shouted Ballard. "I was only half into the stuff, anyhow. Stop Porter, if you can. The brute is guilty of something or he wouldn't act like that."
"Drop into that tank of water, Pink," ordered Merry, "or I'll throw you in."
Ballard, without further discussion, lowered himself down into the reservoir of water that supplied the mill and kicked around in it for a few moments; then, drawing himself up on the rim of the vat, he jumped off to the ground at the superintendent's side. Merry and Clany quickly joined him.
"Say," cried the startled Pardo, grabbing Ballard by the arm, "did you swallow any of the solution?"
"How could I?" was the answer. "I only went in to the waist."
"Got any cuts or sores on the lower part of your body?"
"No."
"By gorry." declared Pardo, "you're a lucky kid all right. Cyanide of potassium is the most virulent poison known. If a person scratches his finger on the tin in opening a case, and gets some of the solution in the cut, in less than fifteen minutes he's a goner. You don't know, son, how much you've got to be thankful for."
Now that it was all over, and Ballard was beginning to realize how deadly was the bath in which he had been plunged, a few cold shivers started up and down his spine.
"My skin is getting up and walking all over me with cold feet," said he. "I've got to warm up, and right now there's only one thing I want, and that is to get my hands in Porter's whiskers and twist his neck. Let's hotfoot it around and see if we can find him."
"This way, my lads," shouted Pardo. "If the thing has happened that I've got in my mind, there's no use in hunting around this camp for the prospector. We'll find out in a brace of shakes."
With Pardo leading the way, the boys ran to a corral on the other side of the camp. Pardo stopped. The corral gate was swinging open.
"That looks," he commented, "as though some one had taken out a horse in a hurry. I'll just go in and see if Porter's horse is tied in its usual place. If it isn't, why, we can make up our minds that--"
Just at that moment a man approached from the corral. The boys jumped forward instinct spelled by the thought that it might be Porter. But it was not.
"That you, Cummins?" called the super.
"Yep, Pardo, it's Cummins," was the answer.
"Seen anything of Nick Porter?"
"Jest about. Say, Nick Porter stormed in here a minute ago, got the gear on his bronk in record time, an' was off and away afore I could git close enough to find out what was up."
"Which way did he go?" demanded Frank. "Toward town?"
"Nary. I rushed around the corral jest in