"I won't be sorry!" chuckled Nort. "I'm tired of cooking and washing dishes."
The boys and their older companions had taken turns with the not very agreeable duties of housekeeping on the ranch. Old Billee Dobb was an experienced cook and Snake often said the old puncher could make beans taste like roast turkey. But Billee drew the line at washing dishes. Said he couldn't see any sense in cleaning plates only to muss 'em all up again. So when it came his turn to cook somebody else had to do the cleaning.
Talking of various matters, speculating on the mystery at Dot and Dash, and wondering what had caused the latest deaths, the boys rode on and on up into the depths of the glen. As they went on, the little valley seemed to shrink in width until it was barely wide enough for the three of them to ride abreast. On either side the grim, rocky hills, studded here and there with trees and bushes, rose high above their heads. Now and then they came upon a little stream meandering its way down the defile. Here and there it dropped over a ledge of rocks, making a pleasant, if miniature, waterfall.
Aside from the clatter of their horses' feet, the occasional fall of a dead branch or the rattle of loose stones and the tinkle of the stream, the only sounds were those of the boys' voices.
"This place sort of gives me the creeps!" remarked Nort with a little shiver and a backward glance. "We might as well have called it a Pirate Den as what we did."
"It is sort of dismal," assented Bud. "But I guess we aren't going to find out anything here, so we might as well turn back in a little while."
"Say after the next turn," suggested Dick, indicating a place where the defile swung around a shoulder of bare rock.
"Suits me," came from Bud.
They reached the big rock, swung around the narrowest section of the defile they had yet encountered and, a moment later, made a discovery which filled them with surprise.
Burrowing into the side of the gorge, just beyond the sharp turn, was a cave with an arched opening. At first glance it looked as if it had been cut by the hand of man, but it evidently had been made by the erosion of water through many centuries.