“Looks pretty tough, fellows,” said Dick, after they had made the map tell them all it could, “but I guess we’re in for it. I vote for Natrolia.”
“I guess I do, too,” Larry agreed, though not with any great amount of enthusiasm.
Little Purdick grinned. “I’m in the hands of my friends,” he said. “If you two say we’ve got to climb the ladder, I’m with you as long as I last.” And then, as they were preparing to turn in early so as to get an early start: “Any danger of that grizzly coming back in the night, do you reckon?”
Larry laughed. “I guess not; not if he’s eaten all you say he has. If he comes, we’ll do like the darkey did with the mule—twis’ his tail. You can roll in between Dick and me, Purdy. That’ll give him something to chew on before he gets to you.”
It was after they had made up the fire for the night, and were burrowing in the torn blankets, that Purdick said: “Seems to me we’re dismissing this business of the hold-ups a lot too easily. If those fellows are going to follow us around all summer, we’ll never know what minute is going to be the next. Now that they’ve got our war stuff, what’s to prevent them from dropping down on us any old time and taking the maps away from us?”
“Just one little thing,” Larry answered. “If they think we know where the Golden Spider is—and if you heard their talk straight that night in Lost Canyon, that’s what they do think—they’ll wait and let us find it for them. They’ve taken the guns to make sure that we can’t put up a fight when the time comes.”
“Huh!” said Dick; “if they’ve been following us for three weeks and haven’t yet found out that we’re not looking for any Golden Spider, they haven’t much sense; I’ll say that much for them.”
“Do you suppose they came here before the bear had torn us up, or afterward?” Purdick asked.
“That is something we’ll probably never know. Better forget it and go by-by. If we haven’t a hard day ahead of us to-morrow, I’ll miss my guess. Good-night.” This from Larry, and he set the good example by turning over and going to sleep.
When they roused up at daybreak the next morning they found that the weather, which during the three weeks of tramping and camping had been as perfect as mountain summer weather can be, had changed remarkably during the night. The sky was overcast, and among the higher peaks of the Little Hophras a storm was raging.