Mystery of the Haunted Mine

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The Espectro Mountains rose almost impetuously from the desert floor to loom high over the scattered ranches along the southern and western bases of the mountains. The Espectros dominated that lonely part of Arizona as nothing else did. They stood proudly and mysteriously against the blue, cloud-dotted sky of day and loomed dark and brooding at night. They could be seen for many miles in all directions and had been used by travelers as the one outstanding landmark in that isolated land, for the other mountains in the hazy distance were as nothing when compared to the Espectros. They could be seen long before travelers could distinguish any particular features of the great jumbled masses of rock that formed them. When one was near them they seemed almost to lean over, as though to overpower insignificant humans with their ponderous might. Even when one was miles beyond the Espectros, it was difficult not to obey a compelling impulse to turn and look back at them. They had the uncanny power of making people look at them again and again and yet never tire of the view. Still there was a hidden seed of fear that sprouted rapidly within those who looked at them for too long a time. Their very name, given to them by the early Spanish explorers, was an indication of the fear and respect which the brooding mountains had always seemed to instill in those who studied them. The Espectro Mountains — the Ghost Mountains! For they were haunted, as surely as the fears of man could people such places with the ever-restless spirits of the dead.

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