Page:Dave Porter in the Gold Fields.djvu/291

Rh this point he gazed around, to see if he could locate any of the others of the party.

As a distance he made out Roger and Phil, who had just come together. Then, turning around, he glanced below him and made out several other persons on a lower ridge of the mountainside.

"Link Merwell and Job Haskers, and that Sol Blugg is with them," he murmured. "Evidently they are not going to give up the hunt."

Dave watched the party of three for several minutes and then continued his own hunt. Roger and Phil had now disappeared from view, and Abe Blower and Tom Dillon were far away,—almost to the top of the mountain.

A quarter of an hour passed and Dave discovered something which he considered worth investigating. Just above his head was an opening between the rocks,—an irregular slit fifteen or twenty feet high and two to four feet wide.

He had seen many openings before, but this was peculiar for the reason that one edge of the rocks looked as if it had been drilled and blasted away. More than this, within the split lay the broken-off handle of a shovel.

"Oh, what if I have found the lost mine!" he thought. "That shovel-handle proves that somebody has been here, and, yes, that is where some-