“When we sneak up the slope, we’ll make for the place where the whiskey is stored. If Crooked Terry is there at all he’ll be drunk, and we’ll talk immunity, and a lot of other stuff to him, until he thinks we’re there to save him from a life sentence in the penitentiary. That will give us the run of the cavern, and we ought to be able to sneak out at some time during the night and get DuBois away.”
“If they leave him there all night!” Ben replied.
“There’s no danger of their making a hike to the hunters’ camp in the darkness,” Jimmie replied. “Those fellows are not mountain men, and they’d break their necks before they had gone halfway down the slope.”
“I guess you’re right,” Ben answered, “and I don’t think we’ll have much trouble making a sneak into the cavern. The only thing about the plan that doesn’t look good to me is the fact that we must leave our machines here alone in the valley. I don’t like that!”
“Unless a grizzly bear or a wolverine should take a notion to go out on a midnight joy-ride,” Jimmie declared, “no one will disturb the machines. Of course it would be safer if we had some one here to watch them, but we haven’t, and we’ve got to do the next best thing. However, I think they’re safe enough.”
Extinguishing all the lights and emptying the store boxes of automatics, cartridges, and searchlights, the boys pushed and pulled the machines into as secluded a place as they could find and started up the slope.
It was very dark and they dare not use their electrics, so they were obliged to proceed slowly until they came to the smooth ascent which led directly to the shelf. Then, although the climbing was arduous, they proceeded more rapidly.
When they came close to the fire they saw three men standing by the blaze. DuBois was not there. The supposition, of course, was that they had stowed him away in some secure hole in the cavern from which it would not be possible for him to escape.
“It’s dollars to dill pickles,” whispered Jimmie as they softly skirted the fire and crept up the gully, “that the Englishman has been left in the charge of that old crook. If that’s the case, we ought to be able to get him without much trouble if we don’t send an avalanche of stones down this gully before we get to the top.”
The gully presented no avalanche of stones to send down. It was quite evident, even in the darkness, that the rough trail had been used enough recently to clear the way of anything which might go rolling and tumbling to the bottom. When the boys came to the mouth of the cavern they saw the crook sitting with his back against one of the walls, an automatic in his hand. He recognized them instantly as they came up, and seemed glad of their company.