This inscription made one thing plain to Ralph. The hut had once been occupied by one of those solitaries of the wilds whose trap lines are sometimes forty or fifty miles long. This Jess Boody had been such a man and had either “made his pile,” or getting disgusted with the location as a source for peltries had, as he tersely put it, “gone on.”
There were no traces of more recent occupancy of the hut, and Ralph was compelled to come back to his first theory; the mysterious man had used the place simply as a convenient shelter from time to time. Some ashes in the stove, that looked fairly fresh, appeared to lend color to this belief. Probably the horse thief had spent the night there.
“Well, if this hasn’t the makings of a first-class mystery about it,” gasped Ralph, pushing back his sombrero and running one hand through his curly hair.
As there seemed to be no use in making any further investigation of the tumble-down shanty, Ralph untied the pony left behind by the horse thief, and mounting it rode back toward camp in a thoughtful mood. He was deeply puzzled, and small wonder, by the events of the day.
He reached camp that evening shortly before dusk, and found that Mountain Jim had returned with the ponies that he had been after and which he had found in a glade across another ridge. The professor, and Jimmie, too, had had a successful day, having gathered in almost a sackful of what the professor called “specimens,” and Mountain Jim “rocks.” But of Harry Ware and Percy Simmons there was no sign.
CHAPTER XVI.
“UNDERGROUND!”
Harry Ware struck another match. This time the two imprisoned lads did not bother to look above them. They knew that escape in that direction was an impossibility. Instead, they turned their attention to their immediate surroundings.