Finally they found someone, a friend of Mr. Bentley’s, who knew them, though, as he admitted with a frown, he knew no good of them. This gentleman, Mr. Watson by name, said that Buck and Carl Lutz were staying at a fashionable bungalow three or four miles from the ranger station.
“If you’ll take my advice,” he said to the Radio Boys, the frown still lingering, “you’ll give those lads a wide berth. They’re no good. I’d hate to see a boy of mine having anything to do with them.”
“You needn’t worry about our giving them a wide berth, Mr. Watson,” said Bob, adding with a grin: “That’s the best thing we do!”
In the days that followed the boys saw nothing of Buck and his friend and gradually forgot all about them. As long as they kept out of sight, that was all that could be asked of them.
After their adventure in the mysterious mountain cave, the boys found it hard to keep away from the spot. They went there every day or so and soon came to know the various tunnels and passages in the cavern so well that they could almost have found their way about in the dark.
Of course at first they were extremely cautious, for they were not particularly anxious to repeat their first experience. They made use of Herb’s ball of cord, attaching one end of the cord to a tree trunk outside the cave and holding the ball, unwinding it as they felt their way along.
It was a fascinating place with its passages, its strange, suddenly-widened chambers where they might stand upright and rest their cramped backs.
And the more they saw of the place, the more convinced did they become that at some time or other the cave had really been the refuge of outlaws, who brought their booty there—desperate criminals perhaps.
Then, one day, they came upon something that Herb declared was positive proof of this belief.
At the end of one of the tunnels which they had not explored before they came upon an apartment where were several evidences of former habitation. There were bits of broken crockery, a rusted hammer, the remains of a rudely constructed chair and a worm-eaten table. And in the far corner, so encrusted with dirt and mold that it seemed like part of the earth itself, Herb triumphantly discovered an old burlap bag.