The sheriff's squad walked far and hunted faithfully all that day. There was no thicket too dense for them to penetrate, and no gorge so dark and gloomy that they were afraid to go down into it; but they saw nothing of the robbers, and neither did they happen to come upon either of the other searching parties.
They stopped for lunch on the banks of a trout brook, and the sheriff was filling his pipe for a smoke, when all on a sudden he struck a listening attitude, at the same time enjoining silence upon his companions by a motion of his hand.
"That's two," said he, in a low voice. "Now wait. That's three. Now wait a little longer, and perhaps we shall hear some gratifying news."
The others held their breath to listen, and presently, faint and far off, and rendered somewhat indistinct by intervening hills, and by the echoes that mixed themselves up with the sound, they heard three reports of heavily-loaded shotguns.
"Hurrah for law and order," cried the sheriff. "Our work is half done, and some lucky squad will have twenty-five hundred dollars to divide among its members."
"We don't get none of it, do we?" whispered Dan to his brother.
"Did we have any hand in making the capture?" asked Joe, in reply. "Of course, we don't."
"Dog-gone such luck!" murmured the disappointed Dan.
"One of the outlaws has come to grief," continued the sheriff, "and that proves that they must have separated. I should much like to know what they did with their prisoner. It seems to me, from where I stand, that they were guilty of an act of folly when they gobbled Bob. They ought to have known that by doing a thing of that kind, they would get every able-bodied man in the country after them."
The officer and his squad were so anxious to have a hand in completing the work so well begun, that they did not remain long in camp, although they might have passed the rest of the day there for all the good they did.