into more details about it here. It would not be playing the game
square.

At any rate the water was finally turned back into the
underground tunnel, and then, in order to better guard this vital
necessity, Mr. Merkel had the entrance to the tunnel boarded up--
egress being possible only when heavy doors, at either end, were
unlocked.

I might say that while the tunnel was the old water-course of a
vanished river, the shaft under the mountain appeared, in.
ancient times, to have been used by the Aztecs, or some Mexican
tribes, for hiding their store of gold away from the Spaniards.
There were secret passages and rooms in the tunnel, to say
nothing of hidden water gates.

Who had constructed these, and what actual use had been made of
them was, of course, lost in the dim and ancient past. But that
it was the Aztecs, or some allied race, was the statement of
learned men who examined the tunnel.

After the water fight at Diamond X Second had terminated in favor
of the boy ranchers, and great copper levers that operated the
hidden water gates had been removed, the tunnel was boarded up,
and was now seldom entered.

But now, as Bud and his cousins rode back from the big round-up,
and the western lad had, as he thought, seen some one sneaking
about the forbidden gate, there was a feeling of apprehension in
the hearts of himself and cousins.