"I believe the boy that rode the mule is over there!" Frank suggested.
"Yes; and he"s probably been picked up by the moonshiners," Ned agreed. "We"ve got to get over there, so here goes!"
The boys went across the streak of moonlight like a couple of flashes, and drew up at the mouth of the cavern. So far as they could determine no one had observed them.
They crept to the very back of the cave and huddled close together, listening.
"Not a soul in sight!" Frank whispered. "That might have been a ghost!"
"Do ghosts rattle metal?" asked Ned.
There followed another silence, and then the clink of metal came clearer to the ears of the listening boys.
"Where does it come from?" asked Frank. "There"s not a crack in sight in this rock."
A puff of soft coal gas wafted into the cave, causing the boys to hold their breaths. Then, in spite of all he could do to prevent it, Frank sneezed.
Almost instantly a dark figure appeared between the place where the boys were hidden and the s.p.a.ce of moonlight in front. The man stepped out, looked up and down the canyon, and came slowly back to meet another figure.
"Nothing doing!" a gruff voice said.
"But that wasn"t any bird!" insisted another gruff voice.
"Well, you may look for yourself!"
"I tell you," the second speaker went on, "that those boys are still out in the hills! When I was at the camp there was only one in the tent, and he sat there with a gun in his lap, watching for the others to come back."
"Did you speak with him?"
"What for would I speak with him?"
"To get his story. What are they here for? That is worth knowing."
"Well, I didn"t show myself because we"re not supposed to be here ourselves!" came the other voice. "If you hadn"t built the fire outside to-night we"d have been in no danger. Now we"ve got a lot of boys sneaking around. What did you do with the others?"
"They"re in the work-room."
"In the work-room, seeing everything! You"re a bright lot! You know now, I suppose that we"ve got to leave those lads here when we go away?"
"I have known that all along. There are plenty of kids in the world.
These won"t be missed. It is a bad job, but it must be done!"
"They shouldn"t have come sneaking around!"
The two men disappeared again, but this time Ned saw the opening to the work-room, as they had termed the underground apartment, when they swung an imitation rock made of plank aside and stepped down.
For a moment their figures were illumined by the red light of the fire within, and then they were no longer in sight.
"They"re a cheerful pair!" Frank whispered.
"Counterfeiters!" Ned whispered, in reply. "And murderers!"
"How are we going to get the boys out?" asked Frank. "They"ll be killed if we don"t."
"One must raise a ruction on the outside, and the other must sneak in while the outlaws are gone. That is the only way I can think of now.
If you go out there and get Uncle Ike, and coax a couple of sobs out of him, and rattle stones, and shoot your automatic like rain, the outlaws may all rush out of the cave."
"I can do all that, but how will you get in?"
"When they run out, they will pa.s.s me. Then I"ll get in through the door," Ned replied. "If there"s no one in there it won"t take me long to find the boys and turn them loose."
"But if there is some one in there?"
"Then you"ll hear shooting," Ned answered, grimly. "In that case, mount the mule and get back to camp and bring Jack and Oliver and a lot of guns."
"But one of those boys must be in there," Frank insisted. "Some one rode Ike here!"
"We don"t know who it is that is here," Ned reflected. "Anyway, you"ve got to get away with the mule after making all that noise.
Don"t go in the direction of the Brady cabin. We don"t want that man Bradley mixing us up with police officers!"
"Every minute counts!" Frank declared, "I"m off. You"ll hear a racket like the blowing up of a world in about three minutes! Good luck!"
The lads shook hands and parted. It seemed to each one that the other was going to his death, but only encouraging words were spoken.
In five minutes a horrible clamor rang down the canyon. Uncle Ike screamed, and the beating of hoofs sounded like a charge of cavalry.
Then came sharp, quick pistol shots.
Three men dashed out of the cavern and Ned crept in at the open door!
"I don"t know what I shall find in here!" he mused, as he came into the light of a great fire, "but I"ll know all about it right soon!"
CHAPTER X
"PACKED AWAY LIKE SARDINES"
Even in that underground room Ned could hear the shooting outside and the screams of the aggravated mule. Several weapons seemed to be pouring out lead, and the boy wondered if the outlaws were getting the range of his chum.
The firing seemed to grow fainter as he advanced into the room.
Either the outlaws were pursuing Frank or the shooters were taking refuge behind rocks which deadened the sound.
At first the boy kept his eye out for an attack on himself, but there seemed to be none of the outlaws left in the subterranean place. The fire was built at one side, and the light from it filled the whole apartment. Counterfeit dollars lay about, scattered over the floor as if dropped in great haste.
Halting in the center of the room, after closing and baring the outer door, Ned put his fingers to his lips and gave out a low whine, one of the signals used by the boys of the Wolf Patrol. While he listened for a response, the firing outside came nearer, or appeared from the sound to do so.
"I"d be in a nice fix if they should seek to retreat to the cave!"
Ned thought.