"No need for him to worry, they are safe enough in the hiding place where Cal used to keep his dust when he had any," grunted Joe, still sitting erect and on the alert, however. Somehow he could not get it out of his head that outside the hut he had heard stealthy footsteps a few moments before.
The Motor Rangers and their friends had arrived at Cal's hut in the canyon that afternoon. Their first care had been to dispose safely of the box of precious stones in the hiding place mentioned by Joe. The evening before their last act at the camp by the ruined hut had been to consign the remains of the dead miner to a grave under the great pines. Nat with his pocketknife had carved a memorial upon a slab of timber.
"Sacred to the memory of Elias Goodale. Died——."
And so, with a last look backward at the scene of the lonely tragedy of the hills, they had proceeded. Nat had not mentioned to his companions that he was sure that he had seen some one at the window, as they bent over the sapphires. After all it might have been an hallucination. The boy's first and natural assumption had been that whoever had peeped through the window was a member of Col. Morello's band, sent forward to track them. But then he recollected the burned forest that lay behind. It seemed hardly credible that any member of the band could have passed that barrier and arrived at the hut at almost the same time as the Motor Rangers. Had Nat known what accurate and minute knowledge the colonel possessed of the secret trails and short cuts of that part of the Sierras he might not, however, have been so incredulous of his first theory.
The same afternoon they had reached a summit from which Cal, pointing downward, had shown them a scanty collection of huts amid a dark sea of pines.
"That's the place," he said.
Half an hour's ride had brought them to the canyon which they found had been deserted even by the patient Chinamen, since Cal's last visit. His hut, however, was undisturbed and had not been raided by timber rats, thanks to an arrangement of tin pans set upside down which Cal had contrived on the corner posts. The afternoon had been spent in concealing the sapphire chest in a recess behind some rocks some distance from the hut. A short tour of exploration followed. As Cal had said on a previous occasion, the camp had once been the scene of great mining activity. Traces of it were everywhere. The hillside was honeycombed with deserted workings and mildewed embankments of slag. Scrub and brush had sprung up everywhere, and weeds flourished among rotting, rusty mining machinery. It was a melancholy spot, and the boys had been anxious to leave it and push on to Big Oak Flat, ten miles beyond. But by the time they reached this decision it was almost dark and the road before them was too rough to traverse by night. It had been decided therefore to camp in Cal's hut that night.
"Pity we can't float like a lot of logs," said Joe, as he stood looking at the water roaring through the flume which was a short distance behind the hut.