He did not, however, swing away through the woods for an estimated half-mile and there resume his conning of the crags. Davy’s directions had been too indefinite, and he was determined not to leave an unexplored gap in his steadily lengthening line. His system was to cover as much ground as he could in each short day, leaving some sort of marker at the point where twilight compelled him to cease, then return to that marker the next morning and do another section. Thus, though his progress through the welter of stone was necessarily slow, he was making it absolutely sure. And now he held himself to the deliberate course he had set.

When the dusk descended he had laboriously made certain that Sanders’ hide-hole, if he had one along here, was somewhere to the north of a buttress-jut beside which he had stopped. After fixing that outcrop firmly in memory and lightly blazing a couple of beech saplings with his pocket-knife for reassurance the next morning, he swung down through the brush to the road and home to his cheerless house.

“Ho-hum!” he yawned over his after-supper pipe. “I’m beginning to sympathize with Ward. Hunting down a man in this old Indian stronghold is real work. If it weren’t for Davy’s tip to-day I’d begin to think Snake was dead somewhere, like Nigger Nat. But there’s no such luck. Well, Snake, maybe to-morrow night I’ll know more about you.”

The vague hope was to become terrible truth. To-morrow night he would know much more about Snake Sanders—including something which would stagger the entire Traps.

CHAPTER XXV
NINETY-NINE’S MINE

Hammerless Hampton stood very still.

Once more he was among the rocks. But these grotesque bulks around him were new; he never had penetrated into this group before. In fact, but for his careful observation of every opening he would not be here now. He had spied a hole in what seemed to be the solid precipice, beyond which showed light instead of the usual gloom. Crawling through, he had found himself in a big space whose existence was concealed by the false face of the cliff. It was one of the freaks of the long-vanished glaciers, perhaps, moving outward a long line of solid stone and leaving beyond it a big gouge in the real butte. At any rate, it was queer.

But this was not what held Douglas so quiet; he had long since ceased to marvel at the fantastic formations along his line of exploration. Now, after passing among a number of small bowlders—that is, no larger than a three-room house—he stood beside a hole opening downward. And beside that hole lay several charred matches.

In his mind those tiny stubs loomed larger than the long wall itself. Some man had been here quite recently: at some time since the latest rain, which would have pelted those cylindrical sticks down along the sloping stones on which they lay. And that man was no hunter, for no hunter would ever bother to enter this barren box. Indeed, no hunter would even find it, for he would be scanning ground and branches, not the naked rock-face.

Warily the discoverer glanced at the corners of the surrounding stones. No spying eye met his; no half-hidden head moved. He looked down again at the opening.