"Stop! Stop!" screamed Kitty. "I'll tell!" She sank to the ground and covered her face.
Ralph, half stupefied with pain and nausea, looked at Kitty with a dull wonder. He did not suspect that she knew the secret.
"Will you promise to let him go if I tell you?" murmured Kitty.
"I promise to let him go if you tell the truth," said Joe.
On the ground, with her hands clenched in her lap and her head bowed, Kitty began her tale breathlessly, as if she dared not pause to think of what she was doing. "About half a mile this side of the Grumbler rapids there is a stream comes in on the north side. You will know it by a large, flat rock beside the river. That is where you land. You will find a trail up the mountain beside the stream. You follow it until you come out of the forest at the foot of a big peak that sticks up like a thumb."
The men hung breathlessly on her words. The painstaking details carried conviction. Little Stack wrote it down in a notebook. With her first words a new horror was born in Ralph's face. He forgot his weakness.
"Near the place where you come out of the forest," Kitty went on, "the trail crosses a ravine. You leave the trail at that place, and follow the bed of the ravine up to the left—just a little way. There is a little bend in the ravine, and a drift-pile at the bend, and above the drift-pile three stunted trees are growing on a little ledge, and some bushes——"
"Kitty! for God's sake!" murmured Ralph.
She would not look at him. She went on faster than before. "Behind the bushes there is a hole in the rock, you let yourself down into the hole, and you come out into a cave. Turn to the left in the cave, and walk a long way—half an hour's walk. You carry a torch to show you the way. You cross the hole where the water goes down. Half a mile farther you come out on the other side of the mountain. It is a beautiful valley. There is no other way to get in. That is the place!"
Kitty came to a stop and looked around her a little wildly. Joe Mixer, Philippe, and Crusoe, were all staring at her as if thunderstruck. From her their eyes turned on each other furtively. The same thought was in the mind of each, and each wondered if the others knew. Joe saw that it could not be kept a secret.