The Haunted Mine Part 34

"I am sorry to hear that," remarked Claus, looking down at the floor in a brown study. "I have a mine up there, and I was about to go up and see how things were getting on there; but if the dirt pans out as you say, it will not be worth while."

"You had better stay here, where you have a good fire to warm you during this frosty weather," said the man, once more running his eyes over Claus's figure. "If you have a mine up there you had better let it go; you are worth as much money now as you would be if you stayed up there a year."

"But I would like to go and see the mine," replied Claus. "There was a fortune taken out of it a few years ago, and it can't be that the vein is all used up yet."

"Where _is_ your mine?"

"That is what I don't know. I have somehow got it into my head the mine is off by itself, a few miles from everybody else's."

"Do you mean the haunted mine?" asked the man, now beginning to take some interest in what Claus was saying.

"I believe that is what they call it."

"It is five miles from Dutch Flat, straight off through the mountains.

You can't miss it, for there is a trail that goes straight to it."

"Do you know where it is?"

"Yes, I know; but that is all I do know about it. I saw two men who went there to work the pit, and who were frightened so badly that they lit out for this place as quick as they could go, and that was all I wanted to know of the mine."

"Then you have never been down in it?"

"Not much, I haven't!" exclaimed the man, looking surprised. "I would not go down into it for all the money there is in the mountain."

"Did those men see anything?"

"No, but they heard a sight; and if men can be so badly scared by what they hear, they don't wait to see anything."

"Well, I want to go up there, and who can I get to act as my guide?"

"I can tell you one thing," answered the man, emphatically--"you won't get me and Jake to go up there with you. I'll tell you what I might do," he added, after thinking a moment. "Are you going to stay here this winter?"

"Yes, I had thought of it. It is pretty cold up there in the mountains--is it not?"

"The weather is so cold that it will take the hair right off of your head," replied the man. "If you will stay here until spring opens, you might hire me and Jake to show you up as far as Dutch Flat; but beyond that we don't budge an inch."

"How much will you charge me? And another thing--do I have to pay you for waiting until spring?"

"No, you need not pay us a cent. We have enough to last us all winter.

I was just wondering what I was going to do when spring came, and that made me feel blue. But if you are going to hire us--you will be gone three or four months, won't you?"

Yes, Claus thought that he would be gone as long as that. Then he asked, "How far is Dutch Flat from here?"

"Two hundred miles."

The two then began an earnest conversation in regard to the money that was to be paid for guiding Claus up to Dutch Flat. The latter thought he had worked the thing just about right. It would be time enough to tell him who Julian and Jack were, and to talk about robbing them, when he knew a little more concerning the man and his partner. He had not seen the other man yet, but he judged that, if he were like the miner he was talking to, it would not be any great trouble to bring them to his own way of thinking.

CHAPTER XXVI.

CLAUS HEARS SOMETHING.

Never had a winter appeared so long and so utterly cheerless as this one did to Solomon Claus. The first thing he did, after he made the acquaintance of Jake and his partner, was to change his place of abode. Jake was as ready to ask for cigars as Claus had been, and the latter found that in order to make his money hold out he must inst.i.tute a different state of affairs. He found lodgings at another second-rate hotel in a distant part of the city, but he found opportunity to run down now and then to call upon Bob and Jake,--those were the only two names he knew them by,--to see how they were coming along, and gradually lead the way up to talking about the plans he had in view. It all came about by accident. One day, when discussing the haunted mine, Claus remarked that he knew the two boys who were working it, and hoped they would have a good deal of dust on hand by the time he got here.

"Then they will freeze to death!" declared Bob. "What made you let them go there, if you knew the mine was haunted?"

"Oh, they are not working it now," said Claus. "They are in St. Louis, and are coming out as soon as spring opens. They are plucky fellows, and will find out all about those ghosts before they come back."

"Yes, if the ghosts don't run them away," answered Bob. "I understood you to say they are boys. Well, now, if they get the better of the ghosts, which is something I won't believe until I see it, and we should get there about a month or two after they do, and find that they have dug up dust to the amount of ten or fifteen thousand dollars--eh?"

"But maybe the gentleman is set on those two boys, and it would not pay to rob them," remarked Jake.

"No, I am not set on them," avowed Claus, smiling inwardly when he saw how readily the miners fell in with his plans. "I tried my level best to get those boys to stay at home, for I don't want them to dig their wealth out of the ground, but they hooted at me; and when I saw they were bound to come, I thought I would get up here before them and see what sort of things they had to contend with."

"What sort of relations.h.i.+p do you bear to the two boys?" asked Bob.

"I am their uncle, and I gave them a block of buildings here in Denver worth a hundred thousand dollars and this haunted mine; but, mind you, I did not know it was haunted until after I had given it to them. But, boy like, they determined to come up, brave the ghosts, and take another fifty thousand out of it."

Bob and Jake looked at each other, and something told them not to believe all that Claus had said to them. If he was worth so much money that he was willing to give his nephews a hundred thousand dollars of it, he did not live in the way his means would allow.

"And another thing," resumed Claus. "I would not mind their losing ten thousand dollars, provided I got my share of it, for then they would learn that a miner's life is as full of dangers as any other. But remember--if you get ten thousand, I want three thousand of it."

This was all that Claus thought it necessary to say on the subject of robbing the boys, and after finis.h.i.+ng his cigar he got up and went out. Jake watched him until he was hidden in the crowd on the street, and then settled back in his chair and looked at Bob.

"There is something wrong with that fellow," he remarked. "His stories don't hitch; he has some other reason for wis.h.i.+ng to rob those boys.

Now, what is it?"

"You tell," retorted Bob. "He has something on his mind, but he has no more interest in that pit than you or I have. He never owned it, in the first place."

"Then we will find out about it when we show him the way to the Flat,"

said Jake.

"Oh, there will be somebody there working the mine--I don't dispute that. But he is no uncle to them two boys. But say--I have just thought of something. We are not going up there for three dollars a day; and if we don't make something out of the boys, what's the reason we can't go to headquarters?"

Jake understood all his companion would have said, for he winked and nodded his head in a way that had a volume of meaning in it. The two moved their chairs closer together, and for half an hour engaged in earnest conversation. There was only one thing that troubled them--they did not like the idea of staying at Dutch Flat, among the miners, until they heard how the boys were getting on with their mine.

"You know they did not like us any too well last summer," said Bob, twisting about in his chair. "If we had not come away just when we did, it is my belief they would have ordered us out."

"Yes; and it was all on your account, too. You were too anxious to know how much the other fellows had dug out of their mines. You must keep still and say nothing."

Claus went away from the hotel feeling very much relieved. Bob and Jake had come over to his plans, and they had raised no objection to them. The next thing was to bring them down to a share in the spoils.

He was not going to come out there all the way from St. Louis and propose that thing to them, and then put up with what they chose to give him.

"I must have a third of the money they make, and that is all there is about it," said he to himself. "They would not have known a thing about it if it had not been for me. Who is that? I declare, it is Julian and Jack!"

The boys were coming directly toward him, and this was the first time he had seen them since his arrival in Denver, although he had kept a close watch of everybody he had met on the street. He stepped into a door, and appeared to be looking for some one inside; and when the boys pa.s.sed him, he turned around to look at them. The latter were in a hurry, for it was a frosty morning, and they felt the need of some exercise to quicken their blood; besides, they were on their way to school, in the hope of learning something that would fit them for some useful station in life. They were dressed in brand-new overcoats, had furs around their necks and fur gloves on their hands, and Julian was bent partly over, laughing at some remark Jack had made. He watched them until they were out of sight, and then came out and went on his way.