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.