CHAPTER X
GILROY AND THE BEAR
When, at last, Ned and Jimmie, still watching about for hostile forces, came to the barricaded camp, the fire had burned down and no one was in sight. Ned regarded the wall of rock with a smile.
“Isn’t that great?” Jimmie asked.
“I’m afraid it wouldn’t do much good in case of an attack,” Ned suggested. “We’d soon get hungry and thirsty and have to surrender.”
“Anyway, it’s an all right thing to shoot from!” Jimmie announced. “If you’d seen the way we sweat rolling those rocks, you’d think it was all right, anyway. I wonder where the boys are.”
“I was thinking more about the boys than about the barricade,” Ned admitted. “Were they all here when you left?”
“All sitting in front of the entrance,” Jimmie replied, “except Gilroy, and he was asleep on a pile of blankets in the cave.”
“He may be there yet,” suggested Ned. “Suppose we go and see.”
Jimmie made his way through the narrow entrance, found a searchlight, and turned a round circle of flame on a great heap of blankets in a back corner. There was no one in the cave at all save only himself.
Before returning to report to Ned, the hungry boy seized a plate of corn pones and a can of tinned beans from the provision chest.