.
"Didn't you wonder a little at how fast rescue got to you?"

"We did at first," Rick explained. "Then we realized you had seen us. We
waved at you and you waved back. So we guessed the mine was the first
place you'd look."

"True, true. But that's only part of the story. I saw you go in the
mine, you see. Then I went back to fence makin'. Pretty soon I heard the
put-put of that scooter and along came the ice-cream man. He parked the
scooter and sort of sniffed around here and there, and then he walked
over and went into the mine. I did some sneakin' myself, to where I
could see what he was doin'. He was looking at footprints, like he was
an injun trackin' the hero on a Western TV show."

"Those must have been his tracks we saw on the way in," Scotty
interjected. "Big feet, which he has, and a reason for wanting to know
how far into the mine we'd gone the first time add up to Mr. Frostola."

"I suppose. Well, he went in a ways and stayed a bit, then he came out
and went back to his scooter and just sat on it. Pretty soon there was a
rumble, and a cloud of dust came pourin' out of the mine. I knew right
away you was trapped in there. Had to be, from the noise. Don't know how
he did it, though. There was no explosion."

Rick explained about the rotted timbers. "He could have done a little
pushing, or even cutting into the rotten wood with a knife. That would
have done it. Maybe he pushed until the beams started to crack and then
hurried out, only it took a few minutes for the beam to let go all the
way."

"That could have been it. Well, I wandered over and asked what the dust
was, and he said cool as you please that he didn't know. Probably a
cave-in inside somewhere. Well, I put on an act about you two poor lads
goin' in and he pretended to get excited, too. We went in, and I tell
you it looked bad."

"Looked bad from our side, too," Rick said.

"I believe it. It was a job for machinery, all right. I hurried to the
house and told Dr. Miller, and we phoned town, but the man with the
scoop was out on a job. The Frostola man was still hangin' around when I
started for town, and he hadn't moved when I got back. I did nothin'
about him because I wanted to talk to you first. Took some time for the
scoop to get there, but it certainly did the job."

"And we're mighty grateful," Rick told the farmer. Scotty echoed him.

"By the way, Mr. Belsely, was anything ever said about a second tunnel
in the mine?" Rick asked.