“Arms smugglers!” Wallace seriously suggested.
They examined the weapon. It was an old style army rifle. Jack whispered, “You may be right about ‘them’ being arms smugglers, but I have my doubts. If you consider, you find that smuggled arms can have only one destination—South America. And we’re too far away from the Mexican border.”
Wallace clutched his friend by the sleeve. “That’s just it,” he answered eagerly. “Just because we’re so far away from the Mexican border, they have less chance of being caught or suspected.”
Jack mused. “Hm! you may be right. But what do you think we ought to do now? Return to camp or what?”
Simultaneously, both boys flattened out. Two men emerged from the woods, no more than about seven or eight feet in front of them. The boys nudged each other. One of the men was the stranger. The other man was saying, loud enough so the boys could hear, “Okey, then, we’ll be here tomorrow at the usual time. And make sure those Boy Scouts are gone.”
The stranger answered, “Okey, Chief. But suppose they don’t go, how am I to get rid of them?”
“Frighten them away, scare them, but don’t use any violence,” the Chief answered.
The stranger saluted. “Okey, Chief, I’ll do just as you say.”
They parted and the Chief walked across the clearing while the stranger turned on his heel and entered the woods again. The two boys lay there flattened to the ground, not daring to breathe, lest they give themselves away. They watched the Chief cross the clearing and enter the woods at the other end. Ten minutes elapsed before they dared to utter a whisper. Jack said, “The cave! Let’s try to locate it.”