It may be morning before Dr. Miller gets really worried."

Scotty chuckled grimly. "Our own reputation for being able to take care
of ourselves is not helping us, either."

"I'll never go into a place without two entrances again," Rick promised.

There was a moment's shocked silence while the boys stared at each
other. They spoke simultaneously.

"How do you know this has only one entrance?"

"How do we know this hasn't two entrances?"

They had never reached the end of the mine. For all they knew, it might
only be necessary to walk out!

"We'll go see," Rick stated. "Right now."

"Didn't we ever ask about another entrance?" Scotty demanded.

"No, now that I think of it, and no one ever said anything about it."

"Maybe they never said anything because there isn't anything to say."

"No more assumptions," Rick said. "We can find out for ourselves. Get
your shirt on and let's go."

They quickly dressed and hiked down the long tunnel to the point they
had reached when the cave-in occurred. Rick paid more attention to the
formation than before, and found it was easy to trace the ore vein.
Pockets in the walls showed where offshoots of the main ore vein had
been located and dug out, but mostly the mine bored through the hill in
one continuous tunnel.

"Funny they didn't take more ore out of the top," Scotty commented.
"Looks like fairly decent stuff overhead and to the left."

"Not good enough, I guess. Refining was pretty primitive in those days.
Techniques are better now, but there probably isn't enough good ore here
to make new operations worth the expense of getting it out."

"Look ahead," Scotty said.

Rick had been examining the wall of the tunnel. He turned and looked to
where Scotty pointed, and his heart sank. It was another rockslide.

"Funny," Scotty commented. "The tunnel goes uphill to the slide."

Rick saw that his pal was right. But the change in elevation of the
tunnel didn't seem important compared to the prospect that now faced
them. They simply had to go back and resume their rock hauling. There
was no way of knowing whether the tunnel continued beyond the slide, or
whether the slide itself was the reason the Civil War miners had gone no
farther.

"I need a rest," Rick said, discouraged. "Let's sit down and take a
breather before we start back."

"Okay. Douse the light?"

"Might as well. Your battery's getting low."

Scotty switched the light off and they sat down on the hard rock