Ned heard some one moving about in the cave, and then Toombs’ voice came again, speaking harshly and with vicious rage.
“You may as well accompany me to my camp,” Toombs said. “We can settle matters better there!”
“I shall not leave this place!” was the calm reply.
“But why wait longer here?” Toombs demanded fiercely. “This is a deserted camp. The boys who occupied it yesterday are dead, drowned at the Devil’s Punch Bowl. Your son with the others. You have no one in the hills to whom you can appeal for aid. If you persist in your refusal to deliver the papers and the information, you shall share the same fate. Will you come quietly?”
There was a scuffle and a blow, and when Ned gained the interior of the cave, he saw Bosworth lying on the floor with the blood springing from a slight wound on the forehead. Toombs made a motion toward his pistol-pocket as Ned appeared, but he was too late. A blow from the butt of the boy’s weapon laid him on the ground beside his victim.
Then the boys all came rushing in, and Jack was with difficulty restrained from giving the half-conscious Toombs a very bad beating.
“Let him alone,” Ned advised. “We’ll tie him up and take him out with us. There are many charges which can be placed against him.”
Jack’s father soon regained consciousness, and there followed a long and intimate conversation between the two. Too anxious to remain in New York after the departure of Gilroy, the father had followed on, trying his best to reach Gilroy by wire, but failing. He had traveled night and day, reaching the camp only three hours before the arrival of the boys.
The reader may well understand the kind of a meal that was prepared just after sunrise. After even Jimmie was satisfied the boys went to sleep, leaving Gilroy, who declared that he could never sleep again, moving about the camp. After a couple of hours the boys were awakened by shrill screams issuing from the throat of the fat clerk.
“The Indians! The Indians!” he shouted.