Page:The Boy Land Boomer.djvu/35

Rh Soon the truth burst upon him, and he staggered to his feet to see if any bones had been broken.

"All whole yet, thanks to my usual good luck," he thought. "But that's a nasty lump on the back of my head. Hullo, up there!"

He called out as loudly as he could, but no answer came back, for Dick and Pumpkin were already gone.

"Well, I always allowed that I would explore the Devil's Chimney some day, but I didn't calculate to do it quite so soon," he went on. "What can have become of those boys? Have they deserted me or gone off for help? If I can read character I fancy that Dick Arbuckle will do all he can for me—and, by the way, can his father's corpse really be down here?"

He brought forth a match and lit it. The battered lantern lay close at hand, and, although without a glass, it was still better than nothing, and, turned well up, gave forth a torch-like flame which lit up the surroundings for a dozen feet or more. No body was there, nor did he find any for the full distance up and down the dismal hole.

"The boy was mistaken; his father wandered elsewhere," was the boomer's conclusion. "Poor fellow, he was in no mental or physical condition to push his claims in the West. He should have remained at home and allowed some hustling Western lawyer to act for