“Oh my!” laughed Jimmie, as the fat confidential clerk struggled under difficulties to make himself more presentable. “If you think you’re in a muss, just look at this beautiful new khaki uniform I put on only a day or two ago! It’s a peach, ain’t it?”
“It certainly is in a mess,” admitted Gilroy.
“Of course,” grinned Jimmie. “I fell down a chute, and rolled into the basement of a mountain, and climbed up a smutty chimney, and fell into a secret passage and had all kinds of sport! Ned and I have had a glorious morning. You should have been with us.”
The confidential clerk frowned slightly, but made no reply.
When the boys reached the camp, after giving a great deal of mental and physical assistance to the clerk, they found it just as they had left it. The boys had not returned.
“Now, what kind of blockheads do you think they are to go away and leave the camp like this?” Jimmie asked.
The boy did not know, of course, that his own signal, shown from the granite rock, had led to their departure, and also to their subsequent encounter with the half-breeds.
“We don’t know why they left,” Ned answered, “but we must suppose that they had some good reason for doing so.”
“Do I understand,” Gilroy asked, “that something has happened to your companions?”
“All we know about it is that they’re not here,” replied Jimmie.