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 he