“It would be just like him to follow Jimmie in there,” Carl observed.
“Sure it would!” replied Ben.
“But what gets me,” Carl went on, “is that he went away without asking for anything to eat! The kid is second only to Jimmie in the capacity of his stomach. He’s always hungry, especially after a short sleep.”
“It is a wonder he didn’t demand a square meal, as Jimmie calls it, before wandering away,” Ben admitted.
“Here’s an opening which seems to be the only one Jimmie could enter far enough to shut the light of his electric from the canyon,” Carl said, in a moment. “If you’ll go back to the machines, I’ll go on in and get Jimmie. I may find Kit with him, you know.”
“I don’t think there’s any doubt of it,” Ben answered hopefully, at the same moment knowing very well that there might be a good deal of doubt about finding the boy in the cavern.
To tell the truth, Ben at that time felt a premonition of approaching evil which he could by no means resist. It seemed to him impossible that Kit could have wandered out of the canyon.
The only solution of the mystery which came to his mind lay in the recognition of the fact that the canyon had been occupied by some one—perhaps by the murderers themselves—at the moment of his entrance.
He disliked very much to give way to this reasoning, but saw no way out of it. The disappearance of both Jimmie and Kit led him to believe that whoever had occupied the canyon at the time of his arrival—if any one had—had represented a hostile interest.
“Suppose,” he proposed to Carl, “that you hurry to the machines while I go into the cavern. Or you might, if you see fit, pass in a short distance with me and stand where you can watch the machines, and at the same time follow my course into the underground passage.”