Page:Dave Porter in the Gold Fields.djvu/254

238 still they found nothing that looked like a trace of the lost Landslide Mine. They had covered a tract of rocks and dirt several hundred feet in width and all of half a mile long. The only spot they had avoided was one where some loose rocks looked to be positively dangerous.

"We might tackle that, but we'd be taking a big risk," said Dave.

"Right you are," said Phil. "If those rocks tumbled on us, it would be good-by to this world!"

"But the entrance to the lost mine may be under those very rocks!" sighed Roger. "And if so, just see what we'd miss by not searching there."

"I've got an idee fer tacklin' thet place," said Abe Blower. "It will be hard work, but putty safe—if we are careful."

"You mean to get above the rocks and roll 'em down the mountainside, one after another?" questioned Tom Dillon.

"Exactly, Tom. We could do it with the wust o' the rocks that are loose—an' the rest wouldn't matter so much."

"But we'd have to take care that we didn't roll the rocks on somebody's head," remarked Dave.

"To be sure."

The task of getting at the dangerous rocks was begun the next day. Stone after stone was sent crashing down the mountainside, into a desolate