The sound became steadily clearer and in a brief time the dim outlines of the three approaching men were seen not far away.
"Hello, there!" called George.
"Hello, yourself!" came back the reply which both boys recognized at once as the voice of their missing comrade, Grant. A few minutes later all three arrived at the place where George and Fred were awaiting their coming.
"You're a great fellow!" exclaimed Grant to George. "Why didn't you keep up with us?"
"Why didn't you come back and look for me?" retorted George. "It's a great idea that a man slips down the side of the canyon and almost falls over a precipice and nobody cares enough about it even to stop and say good-by to him."
"We did come back," explained Grant, "and then we decided that you must have gone on again, so we turned back, then we stopped for we didn't know what to do. That was just about the time when the Navajo caught up with us and told us that you and Fred were back here together. He told us too about Fred's wandering around the canyons trying to see if he too couldn't get lost. According to Thomas Jefferson he came mighty near succeeding too."
Fred did not reply although it was plain that his feeling of relief at the return of Grant was as great as that of his companion.
The conversation speedily turned upon the exciting experiences through which all three boys had passed that day. Zeke declared gruffly that there wasn't one of them fit to be in the canyon. "I'm tellin' you," he said, "this is no place for a kid or a tenderfoot. It's a man's job to work one's way up this gulch, let me tell you, and we ought not to have any infants along with us."
"We're not 'infants,'" spoke up Fred. "Except in the eyes of the law," he added. "We're able to do the job and there isn't any one of us that's trying to back out."
"No, I wish some of you would," growled Zeke. "What with your getting lost and trying to slide over the edge of the Gulch there isn't much time to look for any lost claim or find any prospect."