“I guess I know what I heard!” Case contended. “Perhaps you’d better tell me I’m stone deaf! I tell you I heard a human voice, speaking to the dog!”
“If there was any one in hiding it was Alex playing some of his foolish pranks,” insisted Clay.
“Oh, yes!” laughed Case. “The dog wouldn’t have gone to Alex if asked to! Of course not! And Captain Joe would have made a bristle of his back and growled at Alex like he did that fellow up there! Of course he would! You can say what you like, but I’m going to see what it was Captain Joe growled at. I need a little exercise, anyway!”
“It is a wonder Alex wouldn’t come back,” Clay remarked, as Case, armed with a searchlight and an automatic, started away.
The boy turned back at mention of the absence of his chum.
“He may be in trouble,” he said. “He may have come across the man who is hiding up yonder. I’ll look him up, all right.”
Night had fallen, a dull, windy night, with now and then a star showing through driving masses of clouds. There would be a moon later, but now the spaces below, the canyons and the lifting peaks, were as thoroughly out of sight as if the sun had lugged them off with him across the wide stretches of the Pacific ocean!
“You stay here and watch the boat,” Clay urged, in a moment, “and I’ll take Captain Joe and go down the track. The dog will follow the trail Alex left, and we’ll soon know where the boy is.”
Case grumbled not a little at this arrangement, for it was his nature to be in the thick of any ruction within sound of his ears, but he finally consented to remain with the motor boat and entered the cabin.
“I’ll make a light lunch of a couple of dozen pancakes,” he called from the doorway, as Clay and Captain Joe passed out of sight in the darkness.