This mention of the crutch prints made Purdick shade his eyes and look again. Dick and Larry went along the ledge a little way to the left to see if there were any practicable descent for the burros in that direction. When they came back they found that Purdick had Dick’s field-glass and was focusing it upon a point farther down the wooded gulch.
“Seeing things, Purdy?” Dick asked jocularly.
“I’m afraid I am,” was the low-toned reply. “Take the glass and hold it on the mouth of that little pocket ravine away down there to the left.”
Dick took one glance—which was all that he needed.
“Smoke!” he exclaimed. “Wood smoke—a camp-fire!” and he handed the glass to Larry.
Larry looked long and earnestly. When he passed the glass back to Purdick, the good gray eyes were narrowing.
“I guess that means trouble in chunks,” he announced soberly. “Of course, it may not be the crowd that has been camping on our trail all summer, but the chances are that it is. Those crutch tracks that I found were pointing down that way. Let’s get inside, out of sight, before they spot us.”
In the shelter of the crevice cave they held an immediate council of war. After a little hurried talk it was decided that there were two courses open to them. They could post a re-location notice—for whatever effect that might have upon any one who should find the mine after they left it—and slip away quietly in the hope that the “jumpers” would follow them and so be drawn away from the vicinity; or——
“Wait a minute,” Dick interrupted, when Larry had got that far. “You said a while ago that you didn’t know what the law is about doing ‘discovery’ work on re-locations of abandoned claims—which is what this one is. If we leave the mine without doing the proper amount of work on it, we lose it anyway, don’t we?”