iss Emory, after a long time.

"I'm going to find out how bad it is," I asserted.

I moved forward cautiously, my arms extended before me, feeling my way
with my feet. Foot after foot I went, encountering nothing but the
props. Expecting as I did to meet an obstruction within a few paces at
most, I soon lost my sense of distance; after a few moments it seemed to
me that I must have gone much farther than the original length of the
tunnel. At last I stumbled over a fragment, and so found my fingers
against a rough mass of debris.

"Why, this is fine!" I cried to the others, "I don't believe more than a
span or so has gone!"

I struck one of my few remaining matches to make sure. While of course I
had no very accurate mental image of the original state of things, still
it seemed to me there was an awful lot of tunnel left. As the whole
significance of our situation came to me, I laughed aloud.

"Well," said I, cheerfully, "they couldn't have done us a better favour!
It's a half hour's job to dig us out, and in the meantime we are safe as
a covered bridge. We don't even have to keep watch."

"Provided Brower gets through," the girl reminded us.

"He'll get through," assented Tim, positively. "There's nothing on four
legs can catch that Morgan stallion."

I opened my watch crystal and felt of the hands. Half-past two.

"Four or five hours before they can get here," I announced.

"We'd better go to sleep, I think," said Miss Emory.

"Good idea," I approved. "Just pick your rocks and go to it."

I sat down and leaned against one of the uprights, expecting fully to
wait with what patience I might the march of events. Sleep was the
farthest thing from my thoughts. When I came to I found myself doubled
on my side with a short piece of ore sticking in my ribs and eighteen or
twenty assorted cramp-pains in various parts of me. This was all my
consciousness had room to attend to for a few moments. Then I became
dully aware of faint tinkling sounds and muffled shoutings from the
outer end of the tunnel. I shouted in return and made my way as rapidly
as possible toward the late entrance.

A half hour later we crawled cautiously through a precarious opening and
stood blinking at the sunlight.

CHAPTER XIV

A group of about twenty men greeted our appearance with a wild cowboy
yell. Some of the men of our outfit were there, but not all; and I
recognized others from as far south as the Chiracahuas. Windy Bill was