In the middle of the front side was a large door that seemed to be closed by a single sheet of iron or steel, while the windows, even on the upper floors, were protected by stout iron bars and some sort of inside shutters.
Taken all in all, it was a most dreary, desolate, prison-like structure, to which the surrounding barriers of jagged, gray cliffs, hard, bare, with no relieving touch of green, added an almost sinister grimness.
“By George, pard, what a place to live in!” Buckhart said in a low tone. “I’d as soon bunk up in a prison.”
The depressing influence of the surroundings was so great that, unconsciously, the Texan had lowered his voice almost to a whisper.
His companion did not answer. His head was bent slightly forward and there was look of keen intentness in his eyes. The next moment he spoke.
“Listen!” he said softly. “What’s that noise?”
In the silence which followed, a faint, regular, scraping sound came from their right. It was so slight that for a minute or two neither of them could place it. At length they decided that it came from around the corner of the building, a spot which they could not see from their present position at the entrance of the plateau.
Scrape, scrape, scrape. Scratch, scratch, scratch. It sounded, with the regularity of clockwork.
Buckhart eyed his chum with a puzzled expression on his face.
“I’m not sure,” Dick returned, “but it sounds like filing--as though somebody was filing an iron bar. I’m going to find out.”
He dropped down on his hands and knees and commenced to creep slowly through the scattered boulders to the right. Brad promptly followed him, and in less than five minutes they were ensconced behind a great rock, from which a very good view of that side of the house could be obtained.
There was a momentary pause, and then they both peered cautiously around the corner of the boulder.
The next moment the Texan caught his breath with a sudden, swift intake, his eyes widened with astonishment. Dick, crouching beside him, pressed his chum’s arm warningly, without for an instant averting his own gaze from the surprising sight before them.
On the ground floor of this side of the house were two windows, barred and shuttered like the rest, and, crouching in a group about the one nearest the cliff, were four men.