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.