THE FINDING OF WAGNER
"Good night!" cried Tommy.
The heavy footsteps came on faster than before. The ping of bullets was in the air, and the old channel was filling with powder smoke. Now and then the flash of a gun lit the passage.
"Me for the tall timber," Tommy went on, springing up the tunnel.
"Here! Where are you going?" shouted Will.
"There's a hiding place up here!" answered Tommy. "We saw it when we came down! Me for the hiding place."
"That's a fact!" Will exclaimed turning to Chester. "You remember the old channel running in from the southeast?"
"We'll have to get somewhere right soon!" Chester answered. "Perhaps that is as good a place as any."
Bullets singing down the narrow passage indicated that the sheriffs and their men had already entered the subterranean channel from above.
The train robbers were defending the passage heroically, but the officers were coming bravely on.
Directly the boys came to the lead which cut the south wall of the main channel into the shape of a "W." They passed on up this dry channel just as the train robbers, retreating step by step, came to the entrance.
"Shoot to kill!" the boys heard one of the outlaws saying.
"Do you know the way to the other end?" asked the second outlaw.
"I've been told how to find it," was the answer, "but I never made my way through it. Those sheriffs are game to come crowding into a hole like this in front of two armed and desperate men."
"You get up against the real thing when you strike a Wyoming sheriff," the other outlaw declared.
"Throw up your hands!" a heavy voice came from above.
"Come and take us!" was the only answer.
Another storm of bullets was followed by a groan of pain.
"They got me!" the boys heard one of the men say.
"They got me, too!" said the other. "It's a wonder we haven't been cut into ribbons before this!"
"All we can do now is to lay down and shoot as long as we've got ammunition," the first speaker advised.
"You may as well surrender, boys!" They heard Sheriff Pete's heavy voice saying. "I'm coming down there after you!"
The only answer from the outlaws was a volley of bullets, punctuated with oaths. Tommy turned to Will with a low chuckle.
"This seems to be a nice quiet Boy Scout excursion, doesn't it?" he asked. "We come up on the mountains to have a pleasant vacation, and we butt into a scene that wouldn't be admitted to the stage of any theatre because the critics would say that it wasn't true to life!"
"We certainly do strike life in the raw!" replied Will.
"Are you going to surrender?" shouted the sheriff from above.
"I'll bet they don't," whispered George.
"You're on!" Tommy shouted. "I'll bet they do."
The boys listened anxiously for the reply.
"I'm coming down there now!" they heard Sheriff Pete say.
"There isn't one man in a million who would dare walk into a trap like this," Will mused. "I wonder if this sheriff we've been finding fault with will have the nerve to do it."
"You see if he hasn't got the nerve to do it," Tommy answered.
The outlaws fired once more, and then the boys heard their weapons clattering down the tunnel.
"That's the stuff, boys!" the sheriff said.
They heard him sliding and scrambling down the channel, and turned on their flashlights. The sheriff paused with an exclamation of surprise, but came steadily on in a moment, his deputies not far in the rear.
"Throw up your hands there, you with the light!" cried the officer.
"I ain't going to throw up my hands," Tommy called out with a chuckle, "but if it'll give you any satisfaction, I'll throw up my job as a man-hunter. I have no further use for it!"
"That must be the Boy Scouts," the voice of the Sweetwater sheriff said. "I wonder how they got here."
As the officers came on under the rays of the searchlights, the boys having now stepped into the main tunnel, the outlaws stumbled to their feet and stood leaning against the wall. They were wounded in several places and blood was flowing quite freely, but their jaws were set in lines of determination.
The sheriffs glanced keenly about and smiled as their eyes took in the boys grouped together in the tunnel.
"What about it?" asked Sheriff Pete.
"That's a long story," Will answered.
One of the outlaws now stepped forward, although he still held himself upright by one hand on the wall.
"You're a nervy chap, Sheriff," he said.
"Turn and turn about is fair play!" replied the officer. "It isn't so very long ago that you held me up."
"Any man can hold up another when he has a loaded gun in his face," said the outlaw.
"It strikes me," the sheriff said, "that you'd better be removed from this hole as quickly as possible. Your wounds probably need attention."
"We're not sobbing about the wounds," was the reply. "The only kick we've got coming is that our ammunition gave out."
"You would have been taken in time!" was the reply.
"I guess that's right, with a man like you on our track, I've been in a good many tight spots but I never saw a man walk into a storm of bullets and appear to like it as you have done today."
"Never mind that now," the Sheriff cut in. "We're going to get you out so you can do a little work for the state before you die."
"Say," Tommy exclaimed as the officers and prisoners started to climb the steep tunnel, "when you get to the top have one of the men start a big fire. I'm so hungry that I could eat my way out of this rock like it was cheese."
"What you going to cook?" asked Will.
"Bear steak," replied Tommy.
"That's a joke!" declared Chester.
"Joke is it?" exclaimed Tommy. "You wait till we get out there and see whether it is or not. I went out after bear steak for breakfast, didn't I? Well, I got it, didn't I?"
"Breakfast!" repeated George, rubbing his Stomach. "It must be afternoon, and I'm hungry enough to bite a corner off the Masonic Temple."
"One o'clock!" said Will, looking at his watch.
"Are you boys really going to cook breakfast in the cavern?" asked the sheriff. "Why not go to the camp?"
"Because we can't walk to camp without first acquiring sustenance!" chuckled Tommy. "I'm empty from the top of my head to the end of my big toe!"
"If you'll ask your men to gather a lot of dry wood," George suggested, "we'll have a lot of bear steak ready to eat in about ten minutes."
"But we haven't got any salt!" objected the sheriff.
"Don't you think we haven't got any salt," Tommy replied. "You never saw a Boy Scout go out into the woods without plenty of salt and matches. And don't you think we don't know how to build a fire with one match and broil a steak over coals in ten minutes."
"All right!" laughed the sheriff. "You boys seem to be able to take care of yourselves."
"You didn't seem to think so a few hours ago," Will answered.
"There's one thing about you boys I really like," the sheriff returned with a hearty laugh. "The third degree makes about as much impression on you as it would on the Sphinx or on the Goddess of Liberty in New York harbor."
"That was the third degree, was it, then?" asked Will.
"Do you think I'd string up a lot of babies?" demanded the sheriff.
"Run along, now!" Tommy exclaimed. "Run along, Mr. Officer, and tell your men to bring up a lot of dry wood."
The officers made their way out, followed by George and Tommy, but Will and Chester still remained under ground.
"Did you hear anything in this tunnel?" asked Chester.
"I thought I did hear a moan, but the sheriff was talking in that voice of his at the time and I wasn't certain."
"Well," Chester said, "I believe father's in here somewhere."
"Why do you think that?"
"I've told you about how he wanted to move to this cavern, haven't I? And how he spent considerable time here?"
"You certainly have."
"And about my suspicions that he informed the outlaws of the underground passages?"
"Yes, you told me all that."
"Then you heard what the robbers said about some one having moved the stone, or gone in during their absence?"
"I had entirely forgotten that!" declared Will.
"Well, then, don't you see," Chester continued, "that they must have been speaking of father? That's why I think he's in here."
"Perhaps we'd better follow this channel and see if we can find him," Will suggested. "It does seem as if he might be here."
The bed of the old channel was very steep, and the boys scrambled up it with difficulty. After proceeding a few paces they heard a low groan and their flashlight showed the figure of a man lying on a narrow ledge of rock on the south side.
Chester darted forward instantly, almost falling on his face in his eagerness to reach his father and bent over the figure.
"It's father!" he shouted back to Will.
"Alive?"
"I'm afraid not."
Will lost no time in gaining the boy's side.
The ex-convict lay with his face turned upward, his arms folded across his breast. At first there were no indication of life.