Chapter XVI. How Kalman Found His Mine - Page 2

whether he should or not; for as he rode through the thick scrub he seemed to see dancing before him in the glancing beams that rained down through the yellow poplar leaves a maiden's face with saucy brown eyes that laughed at him and lured him and flouted him all at once.

At the edge of the steep descent he held up his broncho. He had never been down this way before. The sides of the ravine pitched sharply into a narrow gorge through which the Night Hawk brawled its way to the Saskatchewan two miles farther down.

"We'll scramble down here, Jacob," he said to his broncho,--so named by Brown, for that he had "supplanted" in Kalman's affection his first pony, the pinto.

He dismounted, drew the reins over the broncho's head, and began the descent, followed by his horse, slipping, sliding, hanging on now by trees and now by jutting rocks. By the edge of what had once been a small landslip, he clutched a poplar tree to save himself from going over; but the tree came away with him, and horse and man slid and rolled down the slope, bringing with them a great mass of earth and stone. Unhappily, Jacob in his descent rolled over upon the boy's leg. There was a snap, a twinge of sharp pain, and boy and horse lay half imbedded in the loose earth. Kalman seized a stick that lay near at hand.

"Get up, Jacob, you brute!" he cried, giving him a sharp blow.

Jacob responded with a mighty plunge and struggled free, making it possible for Kalman to extricate himself. He was relieved to discover that he could stand on his feet and could walk, but only with extreme pain. Upon examination he could find no sign of broken bones. He took a large handkerchief from his neck, bound it tightly about his foot and ankle.

"I say, Jacob, we're well out of that," he said, looking up at the great cave that had been excavated by the landslip. "Quite a hole, eh? A great place to sleep in. Lots of spruce about, too. We'll just camp here for the night. I guess I'll have to let those coyotes go this trip. This beastly foot of mine won't let me dig much. Hello!" he continued, "that's a mighty queer rock. I'll just take a look at that hole."

He struggled up over the debris and entered the cave. Through the earth there showed a glistening seam slanting across one side and ending in a broken ledge.

"By Jove!" he cried, copying Jack French in his habit of speech as in other habits, "that looks like the coal we used to find along the Winnipeg tracks."

He broke off a piece of the black seam. It crumbled in his hands.

"I guess not," he said; "but we'll get the shovel at it."

Forgetting for the time the pain of his foot, he scrambled down over the soft earth, got his shovel, and was soon hard at work excavating the seam. Soon he had a very considerable pile lying at the front of