“I thought I wasn’t mistaken,” observed Chick, taking the glass from his eyes. “I didn’t need the glass. That black something is the opening of a cave. Outside it you can see, with the glass, there is a fire burning. The smoke stretches across the sky for miles, I should think. You see, the wind is blowing away from us, or the smoke would blow right over our heads.”
“We shall have to curve right around this deep valley to get there,” muttered Patsy. “But I reckon that’s where we’re likely to find the chief. Let’s ask Phillips if he knows what’s in that cave.”
Phillips was asked, but he could not say positively. He knew that Gaspara and his gang often took up their habitation in caves in the mountains. But they were a migratory lot, and seldom could be found in one place longer than a few weeks at a time—often only a few days.
“The trouble is they may see the automobile when we get near,” mused Chick. “Still, I think we can go almost to the bottom of their hill without showing ourselves.”
They all got into the car, and Chick saw that he would be sheltered from the view of people at the mouth of the cave until he would be near enough to leave the car and pursue the rest of the way on foot.
He had made up his mind that he would find Nick Carter there. Every sign pointed to the likelihood of Gaspara having taken up his quarters on that hill, and knowing that he was willing to undertake any job if paid enough for it, there seemed no reasonable doubt that he had consented to help out the plotters of Joyalita by holding prisoner the supposed Prince Marcos.
“Here’s where we shall have to get out,” said Chick, as he pulled the machine to the side of the road. “The hill begins just around that bend and winds up over our heads.”
There was an overhanging shelf of rock which made a safe place for the car. On either side of it, the hill ran down straight from above, breaking off precipitously some ten yards at the other side of the roadway.
The drop here was only about fifty feet, but that would be quite enough to jolt anybody who might happen to fall over, as Patsy sagely remarked.
“What’s the game now?” he asked, looking at Chick.