“How long are we going to stay in this blooming old valley?” asked Jimmie. “I’d rather be sailing over the mountains!”
“You can go sailing over the mountains to-night if you want to,” Carl chuckled, pointing, “there seems to be a beacon fire waiting for you!”
CHAPTER IV.
THE DISAPPEARANCE OF COLLETON.
“I’m glad the fellows took the trouble of building a fire of their own instead of wanting to lounge around ours all night,” Jimmie observed, as the boys looked at the leaping flames toward the north end of the slope. “I should think they’d freeze up there!”
“I hope they do!” cried Carl.
“I wish we had some way of finding out what they are doing here,” Ben said. “They don’t look like mountain men to me.”
“There are probably a great many such characters in the mountains,” Mr. Havens explained. “Perhaps they’ll let us alone if we let them alone.”
“Is there any chance of their being here to interfere with our work?” asked Carl. “It really seems that way to me.”
“I don’t think so,” the millionaire aviator replied.
“What did you learn at Denver?” asked Ben. “Was there any indication in the messages received from Washington that the mail-order frauds were turning their attention to the west?”