With that, Pedro bade them a fond farewell, and departed along a labyrinthian way they could not follow. That some one was on their trail he suspected from the revolver shot, and the fire bugs would be nicely trapped.
Now the Ranger reasoned that the lion’s den would not be far from the outer world, and in that he was right, as he proved by following it to its end. The last lap of the way he had to wriggle along on hands and knees, but he could see the glow of the setting sun in a circle of light at the end, and in a very few minutes he had poked his head and shoulders beneath an overhanging bowlder on a rock ledge. It was the Southern slope of the spur, and after a little reconnoitering he discovered that it was the selfsame spur on which fire-fighting headquarters had been established. The cave, then, pierced clear through the ridge, and he had been exactly all day in following its windings.
Hiking wearily up the slope to the ridge, he could see the glow of the cook-fire perhaps a mile away, while down in the canyon on the other side the fire still glowed in red embers where it continued to devour the blackened tree trunks, though it was under far better control than it had been the day before.
Rosa’s solicitude at his haggard face and tattered, mud stained clothing restored him wonderfully. (After all, there were compensations in the scheme of things.)
“We were just about to start a search party in there,” said Norris. “I would have before, if it hadn’t been for the fire. But where are the boys?” He paled in alarm.
“I don’t know,” Radcliffe dragged from white lips.
“Oh!” gasped Rosa, her eyes filling with tears which she promptly hid by turning her back.
Without a word Long Lester gathered up the paraphernalia the Ranger now saw he had stacked and ready on the ground, and fitted it into a back-pack. There was food, rope, and candles, another tube of carbide for Radcliffe’s lamp, a box of matches in a tight lidded tin, and even a short length of rustic ladder made for the occasion.
Norris shouldered part of it as by previous agreement.
Radcliffe explained the diagram he tore from his note-book, marking a black cross at the point where he had left the boys.