Two of the men picked up the bound Whitey had started back with him, but Crowley stopped them. Turning to all the men, he said, "An' right here, I gives notice—partic'lar to yo', One-Card—thet ef any thin' happens to thet kid, I'm gonna settle with you personal'. Thet makes yo' his g'ardeen an' pertector. D' yo' understand? Rustlin' cattle is bad enough, but murderin' babies is a heap worse, an' I ain't takin' no chances facin' a jury on them partic'lar indictments."
"He's a fine, healthy baby!" said Ross and Tucker, feeling of their wounds.
And all this time Injun lay still in the hay and waited for his opportunity.
The two men proceeded to carry Whitey around the pen in which the cattle were coralled, to where the passage turned at a sharp angle. The dim light of their lantern sufficed to illuminate only that portion of the cavern in the immediate vicinity, but judging from the echoes that reverberated from the recesses beyond, the cave ran for a considerable distance into the mountain. The men deposited Whitey upon the rocky floor with little ceremony, and retraced their steps; and soon he was left in darkness and silence. The two men were joined at the stairs leading to the house above by those who had been sent to block up the entrance from the river, and the closing of the heavy door above left the two boys alone in the cavern.
[CHAPTER XVIII]
INJUN TAKES A HAND
Injun lost little time in crawling noiselessly out of the hay, after he had heard the foot-steps die away on the stairs and the door above close; but he was cautious enough to lie still for a moment and listen, for the darkness was such that he could see nothing. Climbing down to the floor of the cavern, he produced his flint and steel; and in a moment he had lighted a sliver of wood that he had chipped from one of the planks with his hunting-knife. With this light he located a larger piece of stick, and soon had a torch that lit up the space around him for considerable distance. He glided swiftly around the cattle corral, and in a few seconds he had loosed Whitey's bonds, and the latter stretched his limbs that were even then beginning to feel the numbing effects of the tight rope that had pinioned him.
It was necessary to do something, and that something quickly, for the boys did not know at what moment the men might return. Injun split a number of long slivers from a plank to serve as torches, and then the boys made their way back toward the entrance to the river. They found that the tunnel had been effectually closed not more than fifty feet from its mouth by a heavy door that had been barred and padlocked, and which resisted all their efforts to open it.
The fact that they had been able to enter the place at all had been due to the carelessness of the last party of ranchers that had entered and neglected to close and fasten it. Long immunity makes men careless about the most important things.