A half-hour before sunrise the following morning Connie started up the slope, closely followed by 'Merican Joe, who mumbled gruesome forebodings as he crowded so close that he had to keep a sharp lookout against treading upon the tails of Connie's rackets. When they had covered half the distance a black fox broke from a nearby patch of scrub and dashed for the hole in the rock-ledge, and as they approached the place another fox emerged from the thicket, paused abruptly, and circled widely to the shelter of another thicket.
Arriving at the ledge, Connie took up his position squarely in front of the hole, while 'Merican Joe, grimly grasping the helve of his belt ax, sank down beside him, and with trembling fingers untied the thongs of one of his snowshoes.
"What are you doing that for?" asked Connie, in a low voice.
"Me—I'm so scare w'en dat yell com', I'm 'fraid I runaway. If I ain' got jus' wan snowshoe, I can't run."
"You're all right," smiled the boy, as he reached out and laid a reassuring hand upon the Indian's arm, and hardly had the words left his lips than from the mouth of the hole came the wild cry that mounted higher and higher, and then died away in a quavering tremolo. Instantly, Connie thrust his face close to the hole. "Hello!" he cried at the top of his lungs, and again: "Hello, in there!"
A moment of tense silence followed, and then from the hole came the sound of a voice. "Hello, hello, hello, hello, hello! Don't go 'way—for God's sake! Hello, hello, hello——"
"We're not going away," answered the boy, "we've come to get you out—James Dean!"
"James Dean! James Dean!" repeated the voice from the ground. "Get James Dean out!"
"We'll get you out, all right," reassured the boy. "But tell us how you got in, and why you can't get out the same way?"
"There's no way out!" wailed a voice of despair, "I'm buried alive, an' there's no way out!"