"How do you make that out?" inquired Jack Simmons, Bill's younger brother.
"Why, they must have had air ships. They couldn't have rung their front door bells any other way."
"Nonsense they must have had some way of getting down," interposed Rob, who was looking about carefully—"Hooray, fellows! I've got it," he exclaimed suddenly, "look!"
He pushed aside a clump of brush and exposed to view a flight of steps cut in the face of the rock. So filled with dust were they, however, that they had not been visible to any but the sharp eyes of the Boy Scout leader.
"What are you going to do?" asked Merritt, as Rob made for the lip of the cliff.
"Going down there, of course," rejoined Rob.
Merritt, as he gazed over the brink and viewed the sheer drop, down which one false step would have sent its maker plunging like a loosened stone, was about to utter a warning. He checked himself, however, and, with the rest, eagerly watched Rob, as the boy made his way down the precipitous steps, or rather niches, cut in the face of the rock.
It was breath-catching work. The descending boy was compelled to cling to the surface of the cliff like a fly to a window-pane. Between him and the ground, four hundred feet under his shoe soles, nothing interposed but the narrow ledge of rock outside the cliff-dwellers' "front doors."
Rob made the descent in safety, and presently stood in triumph on the ledge. One after another, the Boy Scouts of the Range Patrol followed him, and presently they all stood side by side on the narrow shelf.
"Say, I hope the underpinnings of this don't give way," said Tubby, as he joined them, his round cheeks even ruddier than usual from the exertion of his climb.