"Not a sound. Why do you ask?"
"Oh—er—the idea just occurred to me, that's all."
"Do you think that the men who fired those guns are hiding in the gulf?" exclaimed Joe. "Perhaps I had better go down there and see."
This proposition called forth so emphatic a protest from both the boys, that Joe did not know what to make of it. They declared with one voice that such an idea had never occurred to them—that the poachers were safe out of harm's way long ago, and, besides, it would be putting himself to altogether too much trouble.
He'd find it awful hard work to make his way through the thick bushes and briars that covered the steep sides of that gorge, and long before he reached the bottom, he would wish he had let the job out. They knew all about it, for they had tried it.
With this piece of advice the boys bade Joe good-by, and hastened away in search of Brierly and his employer.
"Do you think Joe suspects anything?" asked Tom, as soon as Mr. Warren's game-warden had been left out of hearing. "I thought he looked at us as if he had a vague idea that we had other reasons than those we gave for telling him to keep out of the gulf."
"That's my opinion," answered Bob; and his companion took note of the fact that his voice trembled when he spoke. "I hold to my belief that those guns were fired by Silas Morgan and some one he has taken into his confidence. But of this I am certain: Silas went after that money this morning, and shot at the man who ran us out of the gulf yesterday."
"You still think it was a man, and not a wild beast that yelled at us?" said Tom.