After a time, Ben placed a substantial meal before Sprague and then, to an answer to a gesture from the Englishman, hastened back to the tent.
“Do you know,” DuBois said, as the two stood together at the flap, “that fellow who just came in was with Neil Howell in San Francisco! I saw the two together there often. If he went to our camp, he found Neil Howell there, and he received no such treatment as he reports.”
“Then you think the fellow’s a fraud, do you?” asked Ben.
“I don’t know about that!” the Englishman replied, “but I do know that he is trying to deceive you, and my private opinion is that he came to this camp for a purpose, and with the consent of Neil Howell.”
CHAPTER XVII.
CARL GETS INTO TROUBLE.
The sun shone warm on the planes of the Louise as Jimmie and Carl sailed over the broken country to the west of the camp. They passed a ridge so high that the timber line broke a couple of hundred feet below the summit, and then dropped, shivering, into a depression wider but not so green as the one in which their tents stood.
The boys were taking their time, and, in the low altitude of the valley, conversation was possible as they moved along, looking to right and left for some sign of a camp.
“The Englishman’s friends ought not to be much farther away,” suggested Carl, after an hour. “We are at least fifteen miles from our tents already.”
“Yes,” agreed Jimmie, “the ridge we crossed takes up a good deal of room. If they are not in this wrinkle, they may be in the next one.”
“Wrinkle is exactly the word,” Carl grinned. “This country looks as if some one had taken a level plain and crowded it together until the surface broke into seams and crags. It makes me think of the undulating surface of an old boot!”