“That’s the boy!” he shouted, pointing a fat finger at Norman. “That’s the boy that tried to sneak into the cave while you were away.”
“That’s the man that shot at me!” Norman said. “I guess he thought I was a burglar. I didn’t try to get into the cave at all, but just looked over the barrier.”
“I saw him trying to climb over!” shouted Gilroy.
“Never mind all that now,” Ned advised. “If the boys really are in trouble we can’t afford to lose any time getting to them.”
“I’ll give you another reason why you ought to hurry,” Norman went on, “I’ve been gone from the camp quite a long time, and I don’t know what’s going on there, of course, but I can tell you right now that your camp will be watched tonight. There may be someone watching me now.”
“What is the real object of all this?” asked Ned. “We have nothing those fellows have use for, either information or documents of any kind.”
“You probably couldn’t make them believe that,” suggested Norman. “At any rate,” he went on, “if they believed what you say, they would still try to drive you out of the country.”
“Had the outlaws anything to do with the plight in which you found the boys?” asked Jimmie.
“Certainly not!” was the reply. “When the boys escaped from the outlaws, they took the upper route back to your cave and came upon the Devil’s Punch Bowl. My idea is that one fell in and that the others, in some manner, worked their way down to the bottom and attempted to get him out. They didn’t say so, but that’s the way it looked to me.”
“So the half-breeds captured the boys, did they?” Jimmie asked.