RICK AND RUDDY OUT WEST

RICK AND RUDDY SERIES

By HOWARD R. GARIS

RICK AND RUDDY

A Boy and His Dog

RICK AND RUDDY IN CAMP

Adventures of a Boy and His Dog

RICK AND RUDDY AFLOAT

Cruise of a Boy and His Dog

RICK AND RUDDY OUT WEST

A Boy and His Dog at Lost River

RICK AND RUDDY ON THE TRAIL

A Boy and His Dog Hiking

“We really found Lost River,” said Rick, “And we know how to turn it back again.”

RICK AND RUDDY OUT WEST

BY

HOWARD R. GARIS

Author of “Rick and Ruddy,” “Rick and Ruddy

Afloat,” “Rick and Ruddy in Camp,” etc.

ILLUSTRATED BY

W. B. KING

1923

MILTON BRADLEY COMPANY

SPRINGFIELD, MASSACHUSETTS

Copyright, 1923, by

MILTON BRADLEY COMPANY

Publishers

Rick and Ruddy Out West

Bradley Quality Books

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

RICK AND RUDDY OUT WEST

CHAPTER I
A MYSTERIOUS MESSAGE

“What’s your hurry, Rick? Going to a fire?”

Chot Benson called to his chum Rick Dalton who was racing down the Belemere street with every appearance of being in great haste. He was not going to a train—that was evident, for he was hatless and coatless—and though Rick and the other boys of the seacoast town often went without these pieces of wearing apparel, still they did not start train journeys in this style.

And there was no fire—Chot was sure of that, for he would have heard the whistle of the pumping engine at the water tank had there blaze.

Still Rick Dalton was in a hurry.

“Wait a minute!” called Chot.

“Can’t!” flung back Rick, over his shoulder. “I’ve got to see about Ruddy!”

“Whew!” whistled Chot.

This explained it then. Rick’s beloved dog, Ruddy the red setter that had been saved from the sea—Ruddy was in danger. No wonder Rick ran. But what threatened Ruddy? Chot was as anxious to know as any boy could be who had a chum with a dog.

“I’m coming!” cried Chot and then, he too, coatless and hatless, sped down the street after Rick.

It looked like a race, and in fact it was a sort of race, for Rick was urged on by a certain anxiety, and Chot wanted to overtake his chum to find out what it was all about. For a time the same distance separated the two lads—Rick in the lead. And then, because Rick had been running longer than had Chot, the latter began to forge ahead and soon he was his chum’s side.

“Hey, slow up, can’t you?” panted Chot. “What’s the rush? There isn’t a fire; is there?”

“No,” came in rather gasping tones from Rick, “but I just heard that a dog’s been shot and I was afraid it might be mine.”

“Who’d shoot Ruddy?”

“I don’t know—nobody—I hope. But I was afraid—”

“Who told you?” demanded Chot, jog-trotting with his chum at a little slower pace now, as their laboring hearts and increased blood pressure, together with a shortening of breaths began to cause pains in their sides.

“Tom Martin,” was the answer. “He says somebody’s going around killing dogs, and he says he heard shooting down near my house. It might be Ruddy.”

“I don’t believe so,” spoke Chot. “I been around here all morning and there wasn’t any shooting.”

“Might have been a silencer on the gun.”

“Sure—but—”

Chot clapped a hand to his left side, a look of pain came over his face and he stopped running.

“What’s the matter?” asked Rick, pausing.

“Got a fierce pain in my side. I got to turn over a stone. Go on, I’ll catch up to you.”

“I got a pain, too. We’ll each turn over a stone.”

The boys bent down very low and slowly turned over the nearest stones they could reach. Then they gradually straightened up again.

“Mine’s gone,” remarked Chot.

“So’s mine,” said his chum. “Funny, ain’t it, how that makes a pain go away.”

“Sure is,” agreed Chot.

They ran on again after performing this boyish rite, which, doubtless, you also have practiced, perhaps with some variation, as I have myself. I think that the turning of the stone, or whatever you might have done when you had a pain in your side caused by running, did not cause the sharp spasm to pass away. Rather, I think, the stooping over, and so compressing the muscles and the stomach organs, was what did it. But I may be wrong at that.

Anyhow, Chot and Rick, relieved of the stress of the side-pains, ran on, turning the corner from the main street and hurrying along the more quiet thoroughfare that led to Rick’s house.

“Why didn’t you take Ruddy with you?” asked Chot, for seldom was Rick seen without his setter companion.

“He wasn’t around when I started off, and I was in a hurry. I only hope he isn’t shot!”

“So do I!” murmured Chot.

The fear that had been in their hearts passed away as they raced into the yard and saw, under an old and gnarled apple tree, a man and a dog.

“There’s Ruddy now!” cried Chot.

“Yes,” said Rick with a sigh of relief. “As long as he’s with Uncle Tod he’s all right. I guess maybe it was a false alarm.”

Ruddy, who had been asleep with his head between his extended fore paws at the feet of Uncle Tod (who was also, apparently, slumbering) awakened with a start as the boys entered the yard. The dog sprang up, looked for a moment rather doubtfully at the lads, and then, as he caught their familiar odors (for a dog’s scent is much better than his sight) Ruddy sprang forward with delighted barks and frantic waggings of his tail.

This, of course awakened Uncle Tod who sprang from the bench under the gnarled apple tree, rubbed his dazed eyes and cried:

“Has it come? Has it come?”

“Has what come, Uncle Tod?” asked Rick in surprise as he tried to keep Ruddy from excitedly climbing all over him.

“Oh—nothing—nothing,” hastily answered the elderly man who appeared a bit confused at having asked the question. “I guess I was dreaming—yes, I must have been dreaming. But what’s the rush?” he asked, just as Chot had inquired.

“Rick thought Ruddy had been shot,” chuckled his boy chum. “But he’s pretty lively for a shot dog; aren’t you, Ruddy old fellow?” and he fondled the dog’s drooping ears.

“Ruddy shot? What do you mean?” demanded Uncle Tod. “Have those scoundrels—”

Then he checked himself and seemed rather sorry he had been so excited.

“Ruddy’s all right,” he went on more calmly. “He and I have been asleep here under the tree. But what do you mean, Rick—shot?”

“Oh, there’s a rumor down town that a lot of dogs have been shot lately,” said Rick, throwing himself down on the grass, an example followed by Chot, while Ruddy crouched beside them. “Tom Martin said he heard shots around this way, and I thought maybe they were after Ruddy.”

“Who?” asked Uncle Tod, and Chot wondered if the man was still thinking of “scoundrels,” and who these “scoundrels” might be. “Who would shoot Ruddy?” asked Uncle Tod.

“I don’t know,” Rick confessed. “Might be the dog catchers are starting in, now that summer is here, but I haven’t seen any warning in the paper about keeping dogs tied up. Anyhow, you’re all right; aren’t you Ruddy?”

Again there was a wild demonstration of affection on the part of the red setter and Rick had to hide his face in his arms to keep it away from the dog’s eager tongue.

“Oh,” murmured Uncle Tod, “I didn’t know but what it might be—I guess you got a bit excited; didn’t you?” he asked, and both Chot and Rick noticed the sudden manner in which he changed what he was going to say. Clearly Uncle Tod had been startled when the boys rushed into the yard, and his thoughts must have been along the line of shooting, though whether it concerned a dog or himself was not quite clear.

“Yes, I was excited,” admitted Rick with a laugh. “But I’m all right now. Oh, quit it, Ruddy!” he cried as the dog again sought to use his tongue as a wash rag. “Just because I don’t want you shot isn’t a sign that I want you to lap me all over! Quit!” he yelled, laughing, and he rolled over and over in the grass to get away from the loving demonstrations of his four-footed chum. Not very successfully, however, did Rick escape, for Ruddy followed, and he did not cease until Rick tossed a stick which the dog rushed down to the end of the yard to retrieve.

“You didn’t hear any shooting; did you, Uncle Tod?” asked Rick, when Ruddy, panting and with his red tongue hanging out over his white teeth, was resting on the grass more quietly between the two boys.

“Shooting? No, I didn’t hear any. I was asleep until you woke me up.”

Afterward Rick and Chot wondered why Uncle Tod had asked such queer questions about “scoundrels.”

“Do they use dog-catchers here in Belemere?” went on Uncle Tod, for he was somewhat of a stranger in the seacoast town.

“Sometimes,” answered Rick, “but they generally give you notice when they’re going to start to round up the homeless ones. Lots of times dogs with good homes get taken in, or killed by the catchers, and that’s why I was worried about Ruddy.”

“Um,” murmured Uncle Tod, which might mean anything or nothing. “Well, I guess everything’s all right. I’d better go in and see if your mother wants me to take any mail for her, Rick. I’m going to the post office and—” Uncle Tod suddenly ceased speaking, and Ruddy and the boys started up, the dog with a menacing growl, as something was thrown over the rear fence of the yard, landing with a thud on the ground not far from the apple tree.

“Hello!” exclaimed Rick. “What’s that?” It was a green object, tied with cord into a round shape and it rolled toward Ruddy after it landed. The dog sprang toward it.

“Look out! Maybe it’s poisoned meat!” exclaimed Chot.

Rick caught hold of his dog’s collar and pulled him back. Uncle Tod looked at the object for a moment and then picked it up. The boys could now see it was a cabbage leaf wrapped about something and tied with string.

“Somebody’s playing a joke!” laughed Rick.

“One of the fellows,” was Chot’s opinion. “Tom Martin, I reckon.”

Uncle Tod slowly opened the cabbage leaf. There dropped from it a stone and another small object which Rick picked up.

“It’s a bullet!” he cried. “What does this mean?”

There was a strange look on Uncle Tod’s face.

“Let me see that!” he cried.

Rick handed over the bullet—it was not a cartridge, but a leaden missile from one and as he passed it to Uncle Tod the boy noticed some peculiar marks on the bit of lead.

“Whew!” whistled Uncle Tod. “It came—sooner than I expected,” and then, gathering up the parts of the mysterious message—the string, cabbage leaf, stone and bullet, he hurried into the house.

CHAPTER II
UNCLE TOD IS MISSING

Rick and Chot gazed curiously at one another, and even Ruddy seemed a bit puzzled by the strange behavior of Uncle Tod. The three friends—for surely the dog was in that class—looked at the retreating form of the man.

“What do you know about that?” asked Chot. “Do you s’pose—”

“I don’t know what to suppose,” answered Rick, not giving his chum a chance to completely form his question. “It’s mighty queer. Maybe we’d better—”

But he, in turn, was interrupted by shouts just beyond the same rear fence over which the mysterious message had been tossed.

“Ho, Rick!” called the voices of several boys. “Come on for a swim, Rick!”

Ruddy barked his answer—he was always ready for fun.

“Hey, Whistle Breeches!” shouted Chot, recognizing the tones of a lad who had been given this nickname because, once upon a time, he wore corduroy trousers, the ribbed cloth producing a peculiar whistling sound as the boy’s legs rubbed together.

“Oh, you Chot!” came the answering hail. “Let’s go swimming!”

“Sure!” answered Rick.

They were over the fence in a scramble and bound. Ruddy following in a magnificent clean leap, and, a few minutes later the lads, half a dozen of them, were hurrying toward the inlet where the best swimming was to be had, away from the pounding surf of the salty sea.

With the prospect of invigorating sport ahead of them, in the water, Chot and Rick forgot, for a time, the incidents of the last half hour—the unfounded fear of harm to Ruddy and the tossing over the fence of the mysterious message—something like the rattle-snake skin of powder and arrows, that, in Colonial days, was thrown into the blockhouse of the early settlers to indicate that the Indians intended to open war again.

“Last one in’s a rotten egg!”

“Whoopee—that doesn’t mean me!”

“No fair goin’ in with your clothes on!”

“That’s right—every fellow’s got to put on trunks!”

These shouts, and this decision, rendered while running at full speed, brought the lads and the dog to the sandy beach of the inlet, where, in a secluded spot, the lads quickly undressed and slipped on old trunks—some donned parts of bathing suits and others sections of cut-down trousers.

“I’m no egg!” declared Rick, as he dived in, disappearing beneath the blue, salt water.

“Nor I,” added Chot, as he bubbled down beside his chum, while Ruddy splashed and barked along the shore edge in a frantic ecstasy of delight and the other boys, eager to escape the laggard designation, followed.

“Tom and George are both rotten eggs!” was the decision of the majority as they arose, snorting from the water, flipping the drops from their eyes with quick shakes of their heads. These two lads, the last ones in, struck the water at the same time.

“I don’t care, as long as it’s a tie,” laughed George, and then the water fun began. It was only one form of amusement for Rick and Ruddy, those inseparable boy and dog chums. Though living at the seashore, as he did, Rick perhaps found more enjoyment in the water than he did on land.

Some of his adventures, and those of his four-footed chum, I have set down for you in the first book of this series, called “Rick and Ruddy,” telling how Ruddy came to his young master literally out of the sea. For Ruddy was swept overboard from a vessel in a storm, and was rescued by a coast-guard, the dog later adopting Rick as Rick adopted Ruddy.

The boy and dog grew, loving each other more and more. They went to camp together, as related in the book of that name, and their last experiences had been while cruising with Uncle Tod in the Sallie, told of in the volume “Rick and Ruddy Afloat.”

Uncle Tod, after having established his salt industry, had come to stay for a while with Rick’s mother, whose uncle he was, rather than Rick’s. But Rick claimed him as his own; and so did Chot and Ruddy, the dog dividing his affections fairly among all three.

“Well, fellows, this is my last dive,” announced Tom Martin, as he stood on an old pile and poised.

“Same here,” echoed Rick. “Stump you to do it backward,” he added.

“Right!” answered Tom, and, turning, he went with a clean-cut dive into the water that way, a feat matched by Rick. None of the other boys would dare this, though it was comparatively simple. Then, one after another, they climbed out, raced around in the sun a bit to dry and donned their regulation clothes, which did not take much longer to put on than had their swimming trunks. The boys believed in simplicity—especially on hot days.

“What you going to do to-night, Chot?” asked Rick, as they were about to part, for their homes were on different streets.

“Oh, nawthin’. What you going to do?”

“Same thing I guess,” chuckled Rick. “Can you come on over?”

“Sure! No lessons now.”

“Oh, boy! That’s right—no lessons now! It’s grand—what?”

“Best ever! All right, I’ll come over. Maybe your uncle’ll tell us something about that cabbage leaf and bullet.”

“And the stone, too,” added Rick. “I wonder what it was?”

“Maybe some of the fellows did it,” suggested Chot. “I meant to ask ’em if they chucked it over the fence but I forgot.”

“I don’t believe they did, or we’d have heard something,” said Rick. “Anyhow, if they had, Uncle Tod wouldn’t have acted that way. He seemed real worried.”

“Scared I’d call it,” was Chot’s opinion.

“Well, maybe he seemed scared, but he really wasn’t,” said Rick, in defence of his uncle. “You ought to have seen him the time I was with him last summer.”

“You mean when you went with him on the Sallie?”

“Yes, when he had that fight with Bucktooth Slither, and Johnnie Green and the Indians beat the war drum. Then I thought Uncle Tod was frightened, but it was only put on. He had a reason for it.”

“Then you think he has a reason now?” asked Chot.

“I reckon so. But still it’s kind of funny—that marked bullet and the stone and the cabbage leaf. But come on over to-night and maybe he’ll tell us about it.”

“I will,” promised Chot. “So long!”

“So long! See you later! Here, Ruddy, you let that cat alone!” and Rick shouted at his dog who showed a desire to chase a lone feline up a tree.

Disappointed, Ruddy turned back to join his master and soon boy and setter were on their way home in the pleasant afternoon sunshine.

“Hope they have a good supper,” murmured Rick to himself as he trudged along. “I’m as hungry as a dogfish!”

His exercise in the salt water, the tang of the air that blew in from the sea and his general hungry condition at this time of day combined to make Rick aware of a gone feeling in his stomach.

“Hello, Mazie!” he called to his sister as he entered the kitchen and saw her busy setting the table. “Give us a cookie; will you?” he begged.

“You shouldn’t eat just before supper,” objected Mazie.

“Um!” mumbled Rick, for he had reached over and taken a cookie from a plate filled with them. “You heard Ma say that!” He tossed the expectant Ruddy part of a cookie, took another one himself and rushed out again as Mazie, with uplifted broom, started after him.

“You can’t spoil my appetite with one cookie, nor with half a dozen,” challenged Rick as he went to his room to “slick up,” before the coming meal. The faithful dog followed.

“Ruddy, I’ll have to be extra careful of you, now that the dog-days are coming,” said the boy aloud, talking to his pet as he often did, for Ruddy seemed to understand. “I’ll have to keep you on a leash or leave you chained up when I go off without you. Can’t take any chances these dog-days.”

Rick, like many other boys and grown persons, also, had a mistaken notion about the so-called “dog-days.” Some of you may have the idea that “dog-days,” are those hot days in summer when dogs are most likely to go mad, are apt to be inflicted with rabies, when their bite may cause human beings, or other animals attacked by a dog so suffering, to become infected with the germs.

It is true that the “dog-days” come in hot weather, from the beginning of July to the middle of August, but they are not so named because dogs go mad on those days. The “dog-days” are so called because during that period, from the beginning of July to the middle of August, Sirius, the Dog-Star, in the constellation Canis Major as its Latin name is, rises and sets with the sun. That is, the sun and the Dog-Star keep pace, rising and setting together.

That’s why those days are called “dog-days,” and not because dogs suffer from the heat and go mad then. It is true that more dogs go mad in summer than in winter, but that is only because of the heat—since all germs increase with heat and moisture—and not because the days have been called after a dog.

But Rick, like many other lads, had this notion and he began to worry lest some of the town officials, thinking of the danger of mad dogs, might try to get rid of Ruddy.

“I’ll have to look after you pretty sharp,” he said to the dog.

Ruddy wagged his tail, for he knew he was being talked about, and tried to get up on the bed to lick Rick’s face with his tongue, but was sternly though laughingly repulsed. For Mrs. Dalton had a strict rule about Ruddy keeping off the beds.

“Oh, Rick! Supper!” called his mother a little later, when he was trying to make a refractory lock of hair, or his “cowlick,” remain where he plastered it down.

“All right!” he answered.

“And call Uncle Tod,” she went on. “He’s in his room.”

“All right,” answered Rick again.

He made his salt-encrusted hair as neat as possible, and walked down the hall to his uncle’s room. He knocked on the door but, getting no answer, pushed it open and looked in.

Uncle Tod was not there, a fact which Rick soon discovered. He called the information down the back stairs to his mother.

“Why he must be there,” she said. “He went up a little while ago.”

“Well, he isn’t here now,” declared Rick. And then, as he looked around the bedroom—clean and neat after the skipper’s seafaring notions—Rick discovered something on the bureau. It was an envelope weighted down with a bit of rock.

“Are you sure he isn’t up there, Rick?”

“Sure! he’s gone and he’s left a note for you! I’ll bring it down!”

With a curious feeling that something strange and mysterious had happened, Rick picked up the missive and started down stairs.

CHAPTER III
THE TELEGRAM

Rick’s mother was waiting for him. With a wondering look on her face she took the letter he held out to her, and the boy watched her read it.

“This is very strange,” she murmured as she glanced through the short note.

“Mother, what is it?” asked Rick. “Has anything happened—anything to Uncle Tod?”

“Nothing serious I think—at least not yet,” added Mrs. Dalton as once more she glanced over the letter. “He’s just gone, that’s all. He left in a hurry, too. I didn’t notice him go. I wonder if he took any of his things with him?”

“I didn’t look to see,” the boy answered. “I just hurried down when I saw the letter. Say, what has happened, anyhow?”

“You may read the letter,” offered Mrs. Dalton as she started up stairs toward Uncle Tod’s room. “Don’t let the potatoes burn,” she called to Mazie who was in the kitchen.

“All right, Mother, I won’t,” was the answer. “But what’s the matter? Why don’t you all come to supper? Here’s daddy,” she went on, as she caught a glimpse of her father coming in the front gate.

“I hope he can puzzle this out,” murmured Mrs. Dalton, as she entered Uncle Tod’s room, while Rick remained in the hall outside to read the letter left by the man whose strange actions, following that mysterious message, had created a worry in the family.

The letter that Uncle Tod had left for his niece was short. Rick read this:

“Dear Schotzie: I’m sorry I have to leave this way, but it has to be. If any one inquires for me don’t tell them anything. Don’t even tell them I’m gone! You will soon receive a telegram. Just believe in me.

Your affectionate

Uncle Tod.”

“He took some of his things,” declared Mrs. Dalton, after a hasty look through the closet. “He must be going to stay for a while.”

“But where has he gone?” asked Rick.

“You know about as much as I do,” his mother replied. “I never was more surprised in all my life! I can’t understand it. Oh, what’s this?” she exclaimed as something fell with a thud from the top of a closet shelf where Uncle Tod kept his clean shirts—some of which he had taken with him. “What is it?” she repeated, and she stepped back from a green object that had rolled to the middle of the floor. “Is it a rat, Rick?”

“No, it isn’t a rat,” the boy answered with a laugh. “It’s a cabbage leaf and rolled up in it is a rock and a bullet, and—”

“Oh, Rick, a bullet—”

“Don’t be afraid, Mother, it’s just the lead part, and can’t go off. See.”

He opened the now wilted cabbage leaf and showed the curious rock, which, as he now noticed, had some shining bits of metal imbedded in it. He took the lead bullet in his hand and held it out to show his mother it was harmless for it was out of the explosive cartridge shell.

“But what does it mean?” asked Mrs. Dalton.

“It’s the message Uncle Tod got over the fence to-day,” said Rick.

“A message? Over the fence? Why—”

“But what does it mean?” asked Mrs. Dalton.

“Yes. It was thrown over soon after I ran home because I was afraid the dog-catchers were out again and might get Ruddy. Uncle Tod didn’t say what it meant—”

“I don’t see that it can mean anything sensible—just a cabbage leaf and a stone,” interrupted Mrs. Dalton.

“Oh, it means something!” insisted Rick. “If you’d ever read any Indian stories—”

“Nonsense!” she laughed. “It’s my opinion Uncle Tod is playing a joke on all of us.”

“No, sir!” exclaimed Rick. “If you had seen his face—”

“Say, what’s going on up there?” called the voice of Mr. Dalton from the lower hall. “It’s too early to be hiding Christmas presents. What are you doing? I’d like my supper!”

“Oh, Dick!” exclaimed his wife. “Uncle Tod is gone!”

“Gone!” there was a note of alarm in Mr. Dalton’s voice.

“I mean he’s gone away, and he didn’t say where, and he doesn’t want it known and he got such a queer message—”

“I’ll show it to you,” broke in Rick, racing down the stairs with the cabbage leaf, the rock and the bullet.

“Hum!” mused Mr. Dalton when he had looked at them. “Some of Uncle Tod’s jokes!”

“No, I think not,” was Mrs. Dalton’s opinion. “Here’s a letter he left.”

Mr Dalton whistled softly when he had read this.

“Tell me all about it,” he suggested. “We can talk while we eat supper.” And when the story was told him, from the time of Rick’s hasty run home in alarm over Ruddy, to the discovery that Uncle Tod had secretly disappeared, Mr. Dalton agreed that it was rather puzzling.

“Well, I take it that the scare about the possibility over Ruddy being shot, poisoned or stolen away has nothing to do with Uncle Tod’s going,” said Rick’s father. “How about it?”

“Ruddy is all right, and the dog catchers haven’t been around,” answered Rick. “That was a false alarm of Tom’s.”

“Then as to this ‘message,’ as Rick calls it,” went on Mr. Dalton, turning over the piece of rock, “we have here a bit of copper ore.”

“Is that what it is?” asked Rick.

“That’s what it is—copper ore. It didn’t come from around here unless it came on a railroad train as part of a shipment, and I don’t believe that could have happened for there are no smelters in this locality. So much for that.”

“The cabbage leaf doesn’t tell much,” said Mazie. “But it’s awfully interesting—quite hectic, I should say.”

“Hectic! Where do you get that word?” laughed Rick.

“All the girls at school say it,” answered Mazie with just the least up-tilting of her nose, for Mazie was growing fast.

“If you mean ‘hot’ why don’t you say so?” demanded her brother.

“Hectic is a much nicer word than hot,” declared Mazie, “and our teacher said we should try to increase our vo—vo—vocabulary.”

“Well, you’re doing it all right!” chuckled Rick. “Anyhow the cabbage leaf doesn’t mean anything; does it, Dad?”

“Unless it’s meant for part of an Indian sign message as you at first suggested, Rick.”

“That’s what I thought,” the boy said. “You know Uncle Tod knows a lot about Indians. I don’t mean those tame ones up at his salt mines,” he added. “Indians, like old Johnnie Green, with his ‘kickum hard—two bits,’ wouldn’t send such a mysterious message as this.”

“No, I think not,” agreed Mr. Dalton. “Besides, everything at Uncle Tod’s salt mine is progressing quietly, since he got rid of his rascally partner Slither. And, as a matter of fact, Uncle Tod has sold most of his salt mine stock, just retaining a small block. So I think Johnnie Green and his Indians had nothing to do with this.”

“But what does it mean?” asked Mrs. Dalton. “I’m beginning to get worried.”

“It’s great!” exclaimed Rick. “It’s like a detective story! I’m going to see if we fellows can’t puzzle it out.”

“No, you mustn’t!” said his mother.

“Why not?”

For answer she held up the letter Uncle Tod had left.

“Oh, yes, he said to keep it secret; didn’t he,” remarked Rick. “All right, I will. Well, we’ll have to pass up the cabbage. But there’s the bullet,” and he pointed to where it lay on the table.

“Yes,” said Mr. Dalton, “there’s the bullet. Get me my magnifying glass from my desk, will you please, Mazie?” he asked his daughter. And when the powerful lens was brought, Mr. Dalton, under it, studied the leaden missile.

“There are some letters scratched on this,” he said, after a while. “There’s a c and an o. Wait, I’ll write them down as they appear.”

On a piece of paper he set the letters down in this fashion

C

M E

O

“What do they mean?” asked Mazie, looking over her father’s shoulder.

“Maybe that’s the Indian’s weather vane,” suggested Mrs. Dalton, “and the letters stand for the points of the compass, like our N for north, and so on.”

“I don’t believe so,” spoke Mr. Dalton. “If they intended this for a weather vane there would have been an arrow or a cross or something like that.”

Mazie was busy with pencil and paper, putting down the letters.

“What are you trying to do?” asked Rick.

“Seeing what they spell,” she answered. “But ocem, mcoe, oemc or moce doesn’t spell anything in English. Maybe it’s an Indian word and meant danger for Uncle Tod!” she eagerly exclaimed.

“You’re getting as strangely mysterious as Rick,” laughed her father. “Wait a moment, though,” he exclaimed as if a new idea had occurred to him. Quickly he set the letters down on paper, and then he wrote them in a new combination.

“I have it!” he cried, as pleased as a boy or girl would have been over the solution of a puzzle. “This is the word!”

He held out a paper on which he had written:

COME

“That’s what it is,” he said. “It was a summons to Uncle Tod. The word is ‘come,’ and on a bullet means ‘come in a hurry,’ I take it. I think we have solved that much.”

“Huh! Come,” murmured Rick. “I guess that’s it. But say, what a lot of combinations you can make out of four letters!” he cried. He wrote,—meco, ocem, cmoe, moce, eomc, mcoe—until his mother cried:

“Oh, Rick, stop it! You’re getting on my nerves!”

But it is rather surprising to see how many combinations, other than the right one, can be made from those four letters.

“It seems, then,” went on Mr. Dalton, “that Uncle Tod was summoned away by this mysterious message, tossed over the back fence by some one unknown. Why this form of summons should be chosen, rather than an ordinary letter I don’t know. But as long as Uncle Tod has gone, and the letter he left seems to confirm this, we might try to find out how he was able to slip off without any of you seeing him,” and he looked at his wife, daughter and son.

“I was swimming,” said Rick.

“I only came home a little while ago,” Mazie said. “I was over to Helen’s house.”

“And I’ve been so busy that all I remember is that Uncle Tod came in,” said Mrs. Dalton. “I didn’t hear him go out.”

However the fact remained that Uncle Tod had gone out, and had taken a few things with him in a valise, which would seem to indicate that he intended remaining some time.

“He must have come down the back stairs when I was in the front of the house,” decided Mrs. Dalton.

“And he could easily get over the back fence and go to the station that way,” added her husband. “I think I’ll make some inquiries at the railroad station.”

He did this, with the result that it was easily established Uncle Tod had met a man there, and had bought a ticket for a western city. But this was all that could be learned.

“I guess we’ll just have to wait until he sends that telegram he speaks of in his letter,” said Mrs. Dalton.

“Yes,” agreed her husband. “But I don’t see the need for all this mysteriousness.”

“Uncle Tod knows what he’s doing,” said Rick. “I thought he was crazy when I was cruising with him on the Sallie, but it turned out all right, and I’m sure it will now.”

“Of course he may have had his reasons,” admitted Mr. Dalton, “but I can’t guess at any to make him leave so quickly and so secretly. It’s just as if he were afraid.”

“Maybe he is afraid,” admitted Rick, “I mean afraid of getting us in trouble. He isn’t afraid for himself, but some danger might be hanging over him and he didn’t want us mixed up in it.”

“Oh, nonsense!” laughed Mr. Dalton. “I guess you Boy Scouts have been playing too many Indian games.”

“No,” said Rick, for he and Chot were now full-fledged Scouts, “we only do the best things the real Indians once did. Of course some of them were mysterious, and Uncle Tod may know about them. But I would like to know what all this means.”

“So would I,” agreed his mother with a sigh. “I hope nothing happens to Uncle Tod.”

“I reckon he can look out for himself,” said her husband, and Rick murmured:

“He sure can!”

The family agreed that nothing was to be said to outsiders concerning the strange leaving of Uncle Tod. If questions were asked they were to be evaded, or it could be said, with perfect truth, that Mr. Belmont (his name was Toddingham Belmont) had gone away for a few days.

“And when that telegram comes we’ll know more about it,” suggested Rick. Meanwhile he and Ruddy pursued their usual line of activities about Belemere, going swimming, fishing, crabbing or off on joyous excursions in the fields and woods.

And then, one day, the expected message came. Uncle Tod had been gone nearly a week, without a word as to his whereabouts when, one afternoon, the colored boy from the telegraph office, riding his ramshackle and rattling wheel, stopped at the Dalton home.

“Oh, Mother!” cried Mazie. “Here’s a telegram!”

Mrs. Dalton’s hand shook a little as she signed the book, for telegrams were rather unusual, and she told Mazie to give the boy ten cents for himself.

“Is it from Uncle Tod?” asked Rick eagerly, as he quieted Ruddy, with whom he had been romping in the yard.

“I don’t know, my dear. I’ll tell you in a minute,” his mother answered.

With still trembling hands she tore open the envelope. It was a telegram from Uncle Tod, dated from the western town of Bitter Sweet Gulch, and the message read:

“Arrived safe and sound, but need help. Let Rick and Ruddy come West. I want them. Also bring another boy. They’ll have a good time and be of service to me. Will explain later. Come soon, and don’t forget Ruddy.”

“Whew!” whistled Rick as he sensed the import of the message. “Ruddy and me for the West! Hurray. Oh, boy!”

CHAPTER IV
OFF FOR THE WEST

Eagerly Rick read over again the message that his mother surrendered to him. At first he could not grasp it all, but gradually the import came to him.

Uncle Tod had strangely, quickly and mysteriously gone out west, and now he wanted Rick and Ruddy to follow—that much was clear at all events. What he wanted Rick to do was still a mystery.

“I guess he wants me to help him, same as he did when he had trouble with Bucktooth Slither,” suggested Rick, in answer to his mother’s suggestive glance.

“But I thought that Slither went away,” said Mrs. Dalton.

“He did, so this must be somebody else,” spoke Rick. “Oh, Mother, may Ruddy and I go?” he pleaded.

“We’ll have to see about it,” was her answer, “and talk it over with your father. Of course there is no school now, and you always wanted to see the west. But as for taking Ruddy—”

“Oh, I couldn’t go without Ruddy!” cried Rick. “Could I, old boy!” and he flung his arms around the shaggy head of his beloved dog.

“Well, we’ll see,” was all Mrs. Dalton could say. “Where is this Bitter Sweet Gulch, anyhow?”

“Out west—that’s all I know,” answered Rick. “Oh, boy! Out west! And Uncle Tod says for me to bring another fellow!” he added.

“Whom will you take—that is providing you can go?” asked his mother.

“Chot, of course,” was the ready reply. “He and I are better chums than any of the other fellows, though I like ’em all. But Ruddy will mind Chot almost as good as he does me. I’m going over and tell Chot to get ready.”

“No! Not yet!” commanded Mrs. Dalton, catching Rick as he would have rushed from the house. “Maybe you can’t go, and there’s no use getting Chot all worked up and then disappointing him.”

“Oh, I hope we can go! I hope we can go!” murmured Rick. “Don’t you want to go, Ruddy?” he asked his dog. And if the joyous activity of the setter was any indication, he most certainly did want to go.

“Hum,” was all Mr. Dalton said later, when told of the new turn in events. “Well, at any rate, Uncle Tod telegraphed as he said he would. But I’d like to know considerable more of what it’s about.”

“He says he’s going to explain later,” remarked Rick. “But if you let me and Chot and Ruddy go out there, Dad, we could write back all about it.”

“I’ll see,” was all the satisfaction Rick got from his father.

“But when will you see?” persisted the lad. “Uncle Tod wants us in a hurry, or he wouldn’t have telegraphed. When will you see, Dad?”

“Oh, I’ll send him a night letter asking for more explanations,” was Mr. Dalton’s decision. “If it’s all right you can go.”

And in the morning, following the despatch of the night letter to Bitter Sweet Gulch, there came another telegram from Uncle Tod to Mr. Dalton. The contents of this message Mr. Dalton did not tell his son, but it seemed to be satisfactory, for when Rick, with eager voice asked again:

“Can we go?”

The answer was:

“Get ready!”

“Whoop!” yelled Rick. “Now I can tell Chot!” and away he and Ruddy raced to the home of his chum. “Chot! Chot!” yelled Rick. “We’re going out west!”

“Who is? You and Ruddy?”

“Yes, and you! Oh, boy! It’s too good to be true! Listen!” And Rick breathlessly told as much of the story as was needful.

Chot clasped his chum firmly by the hand and led him into the presence of Mrs. Benson.

“Tell her, Rick,” besought Chot, with pathetic eagerness. “And then say I can go, Momsie! Oh, say I can go!” he pleaded.

“Well, what’s all this about?” asked Chot’s mother with a laugh.

And when she had been told she looked a little serious and said, as Mrs. Dalton had said: “I’ll see.”

However, not to go into too many details about the discussion of the questions, pro and con, let it be said that finally permission was given for Chot to accompany Rick and Ruddy out west.

And then, as you may well imagine, busy times began in both households, for though, as compared to girls, boys are not difficult subjects to prepare for a journey, in this case there was Ruddy the dog to be considered.

“I don’t really see how you are going to take him,” said Mr. Dalton, when the arrangements had been pretty well settled as to Rick and Chot. “Ruddy will have to ride in baggage cars, and he ought to be put in a crate. He’s bound to be miserable and he may get loose and jump out.”

Rick looked serious on hearing this.

“You’d better leave him behind,” suggested Mrs. Dalton.

“Nope!” declared Rick. “If Ruddy can’t go I don’t go—besides, Uncle Tod asked specially for him.”

“Well,” began Mr. Dalton, “I don’t see—”

And then Mazie interrupted with a joyous cry of:

“Oh, I’ve just thought of something! They could all go out in an auto; couldn’t they; Rick, Ruddy and Chot?”

“We could if we had a car,” answered Rick, a bit gloomily.

“It would be swell!” declared Chot. “But we can’t drive a car away out beyond the Rockies. Besides, we haven’t any.”

“No, but Mr. Campbell has,” said Mazie. “He’s going to go out west in his touring car, and Mabel Campbell was saying to me yesterday her father wished he had some one to make the trip with him, as none of them can go and he doesn’t like to travel alone.”

“Is that so?” asked Mr. Dalton, and some of the perplexity faded from his face. “Well, if Mr. Campbell would take the boys and dog—Oh, but it’s too much to ask.”

“I think he’d like it,” suggested Mrs. Dalton. “He’s always very friendly with Rick and Ruddy. Why don’t you call him up and ask him?”

“Please do!” begged Rick.

“All right,” assented his father, rather reluctantly. “But it seems to me like a pretty large order.”

However Mr. Campbell, who lived a few houses down the street, was soon talking over the wire to Mr. Dalton, and the upshot of it was that he readily agreed to take the boys and dog with him in his large touring car. He was going all the way to San Francisco and Bitter Sweet Gulch was not much off his trail, he said. He would be glad to leave the boys and Ruddy there.

“Well, this looks better,” said Mr. Dalton, when he had expressed his own thanks and those of the boys. “It will be a lot easier going by auto, especially with the dog. Of course it may take a little longer, but that can’t be helped. I’ll telegraph Uncle Tod you are coming.”

Rick and Chot did an impromptu war dance about the room, and Ruddy joined in while Mazie smiled happily, glad that she had been the means of solving what had been a difficult problem.

Reservations that had been asked for in regard to railroad tickets and sleeping car berths were cancelled, and the boys began to go over again the lists of things they were going to take with them. Mr. Dalton went to call on Mr. Campbell to get the names of the different cities, where stops would be made, so he could get in touch with Chot and Rick on the way out.

“Oh, boy! Isn’t this the best ever!” cried Rick to Chot each time they met in the days that intervened before the start.

“Couldn’t be better!” was the answer.

Mrs. Dalton shook her head and sighed once or twice.

“I’m sure I want you boys to have a good time,” she said, “but it is all so mysterious. What is Uncle Tod doing out there, and if he was needed why couldn’t he have been sent for in the regular way, instead of being summoned by a cabbage leaf and a bullet?”

“That’s the best part of it,” chuckled Rick, “the mystery.”

“You must tell me all about it,” begged Mazie.

“We will,” promised Chot. “When we find it out ourselves.”

At last the preparations were completed, the boys’ bags were packed, Mr. Campbell had had his car inspected and “tuned-up,” and on a fine, sunny morning the little party started for the west.

“Good-bye! Good-bye!” was called again, and in the eyes of Mrs. Dalton and Mrs. Benson were traces of tears.

“Well,” said Mr. Campbell, as he shook hands with Mr. Benson and Mr. Dalton, “I’ll look after the boys all right—don’t worry.”

“I won’t,” said Mr. Dalton, and Chot’s father nodded in assent.

They had fairly started but stopped as Mrs. Dalton cried:

“Here comes the telegraph boy! Maybe there’s a message from Uncle Tod! Wait a minute!”

Rick and Chot felt a sinking sensation in the region of their hearts as they thought perhaps this might be a message telling them not to come.

CHAPTER V
RUDDY GIVES WARNING

With a quick motion, Mr. Dalton tore open the envelope and rapidly scanned the telegram. By the smile that spread over his face the boys knew it could be nothing serious.

“What is it?” asked Mrs. Dalton. “Who is it from?”

“Uncle Tod,” answered her husband. “He says: ‘Tell Rick not to forget Ruddy!’”

“As if I would,” murmured the dog’s young master.

“Oh, boy!” whispered Chot in his chum’s ear. “I was afraid he was dead or something, and we couldn’t go.”

“So was I,” admitted Rick.

But after this slight delay the start was made again, though “Sartin Sure,” the colored man of all work about the Dalton place, sighed and shook his head dubiously as the auto went down the street.

“What’s the matter, Sartin Sure?” asked Mazie. This odd name had been given the faithful negro helper because of his habit, whenever asked if he could do anything, of answering: “Sartin, sure I kin do it!”

“Bad luck, Missie,” he answered.

“Bad luck, Sartin, what do you mean?” asked Rick’s sister.

“Dey is suah t’ hab bad luck, fo’ didn’t dey start off an’ den stop t’ read dat tellygraft? Dey did, an’ dey suah will hab bad luck!”

“Isn’t there any way of stopping it, Sartin?” asked Mazie, more to please the old man than because she really had any belief in his many superstitions.

“Well, Missie, if dey had got out an’ turned around free times arter dey done stopped when dey had once started, dat would hab scairt de bad luck off. But now de only t’ing t’ do is fo’ somebody t’ hide a black hoss hair under a stone an’ say, free times: ‘Bad luck ride away!’”

“Couldn’t you do that, Sartin Sure?” asked Mazie.

“Why, ob course, Missie, Ah kin ef yo’ wants me t’.”

“It might not be a bad idea,” agreed Mazie, more to take the old man’s mind off his superstitious brooding than for any other reason.

“Den Ah’ll do it!” he declared. “Ah suah will!”

And he did, for some time later that day Mrs. Dalton saw him muttering and puttering away over a flat stone in the garden.

“What in the world is he doing?” Mazie’s mother asked her.

“Driving away Rick’s bad luck,” was the laughing answer.

“Oh, Mazie, you shouldn’t tease him or encourage him that way,” her mother objected.

“He’s got to have something to amuse himself with,” said the girl with another laugh, “and as long as I don’t believe in it, no harm is done.”

“But you shouldn’t let Sartin think you believe in such foolish charms,” went on her mother. “However it’s done, now, but don’t do it again.”

“I won’t,” promised Mazie. “But, Oh, I do hope the boys will be all right.”

“Your father seems to think they will be,” said Mrs. Dalton. “Of course it’s a long, and not easy, trip for such young lads, but Mr. Campbell will look well after them, and when they get to Bitter Sweet Gulch, there Uncle Tod will meet them. I guess they’ll be all right.”

As for Rick, Chot and Ruddy they had not the slightest doubt but that they would safely get out west, and there was no end to the many adventures they planned, from learning to be cowboys to visiting the reservations of all the Indians within a hundred miles.

Rick and Chot knew, as do most sensible boys, that the days of Indian hunting and buffalo chasing across the western plains were gone forever. The buffalo, except those on protected ranges, were a thing of the romantic past, and as for the Indians, they were rapidly dying off, and those who remained were on government reservations.

Of course, down toward the Mexican border there were occasional outbreaks of the Yaquis, but from these our friends had nothing to fear, for they were not going that far south. Not that Rick and Chot would have “feared” this contingency. To the contrary they would rather have welcomed it. But it was not to be.

And so, for the first few days, they traveled on with Mr. Campbell in his comfortable touring car, with Ruddy on the seat between them, and nothing of any moment occurred. There was an occasional bit of tire trouble, and once they ran into such a rain storm that they remained for two days near a city, waiting for the storm to pass.

The boys even enjoyed this stay, for Mr. Campbell put up at a hotel in a small suburban town just outside the city, as he thought the boys and dog would have more freedom than in a larger inn. And Chot and Rick appreciated this, as did Ruddy.

Then the rain stopped, the sun came out and they were on their way again. As Mr. Campbell did not have to keep to any strict timetable, or schedule, the loss of a few days did not matter.

They did not expect all “smooth sailing,” and they did not get it. Toward evening, on about the fifth day of travel, they were approaching a fairly large city, outside of which were signs along the highway warning that the road was under reconstruction. Half of the thoroughfare was torn up and was being replaced with new concrete, while the other half, in a distressing state of ruts and holes, was used by vehicles.

Owing to the fact that the part of the road that was in use was so narrow that two autos could not pass, the machines had to be operated like trains on a single track road. That is a certain number were allowed to come east, while western traffic was held up at the control station until the signal was given to let the waiting ones have their turn.

On the occasion when our friends started down the narrow road, piled thickly with highway materials on the side being rebuilt something went wrong with the signals, and two streams of autos—pleasure cars and trucks started from each end at the same time.

The result was that none could pass, any more than two trains meeting on a single track, while going in opposite directions, can get by.

There was a lot of talk, and it seemed impossible to straighten out the tangle, unless one or the other of the long line of cars backed up, and none of the drivers wanted to do this.

But finally one of the highway engineers got a gang of men out and they hastily made a wide enough place so that one line of cars could turn out, though it was risky work, for there was mud and water all over on account of the rain.

As it was, one car just behind Mr. Campbell’s was upset, though no one was hurt for it was moving slowly. Mr. Campbell and the boys helped right the machine and then towed it, as the steering gear was broken.

“Well, I’m glad we’re out of that!” exclaimed Mr. Campbell when they were again on a broad highway. “And I think I’ll take a short cut I know of to get into Elmwood. We’ll stay there for the night.”

“Have you been this way before?” asked Rick.

“Oh, yes, once or twice, and I think I know a back road that will take us into Elmwood in much shorter time than by following the main trail. We’ll try it.”

He swung off after passing through the next small city and as darkness fell the boys and dog with Mr. Campbell were traveling along a fairly good, but evidently seldom-used, country highway.

“What do you think your Uncle Tod has for us to do out where he is, Rick?” asked Chot as the auto rolled along, not any too smoothly, for the road became rougher.

“I can’t seem to guess,” was the answer, “though I’ve tried a lot. It’s almost like the time he took me on the Sallie. I didn’t know what in the world he was up to until toward the end.”

“And he’s so particular about having Ruddy come,” went on Chot. “Why do you s’pose he wants the dog?”

“Well, Ruddy’s smart,” said Rick, a bit proudly, as you would have felt if you owned such a dog.

“I know that,” agreed Chot. “Oh, say, maybe he’s gone in for raising sheep—a lot of men out west do that—and maybe he wants Ruddy to help drive the sheep.”

“Maybe,” assented Rick. “But I don’t guess—if it was just sheep herding—that Uncle Tod would be in such a hurry and act so queer. It’s something else, and I hope we can help.”

“So do I,” agreed Chot. “Anyhow, I’m glad we got Ruddy along.”

Rick was, too, and he gently pulled the ears of his four-footed chum, at which sign of affection Ruddy tried to wash Rick’s face with that ever-busy red tongue.

It grew very dark as they progressed along the quiet back-country road, and Mr. Campbell drove carefully, scanning the highway as it was revealed to him in the glare of his powerful headlights.

“I think we’re going to have another storm, boys,” he remarked.

There was a flashing of distant lightning and a rumble of thunder, at which sound Ruddy pricked up his ears.

“Think it’ll come before we get to Elmwood?” asked Rick.

“I hope not. I don’t fancy being on a dirt road in a rain,” was the answer. “But I think we must be nearly there.”

“I just saw a sign post!” exclaimed Chot as they flashed past one. “Shall I get out and see what it says?”

“If you wouldn’t mind,” suggested Mr. Campbell.

He stopped the car and Rick and Chot, accompanied by Ruddy ran back, for the boys said they wanted to “stretch their legs” that were cramped from long sitting in the car.

“Fifteen miles to Elmwood,” read Chot in the light of a pocket flashlamp he carried.

“I thought we were nearer than that,” remarked Mr. Campbell. “Well it won’t take long if we can beat the rain.”

But the louder thunder, and the increased brightness and frequency of the lightning, seemed to indicate that the storm would soon break.

Mr. Campbell guided his car around a curve, at a point where the trees meeting overhead rendered the highway very dark. He saw a straight stretch ahead of him, and was about to resume speed when Ruddy suddenly uttered a howl, so weird and so full of import that, as Chot said afterward, it made his hair stand up.

“Ruddy! Ruddy! What’s the matter!” cried Rick, patting his dog’s head.

Again Ruddy howled, in that mournful way dogs have—a nerve-racking sound at best, and doubly so on a lonely road after dark and with a brooding storm overhead.

Mr. Campbell suddenly jammed on the brakes, locking the rear wheels and sliding the car along with a crunch of gravel beneath the tires.

“What’s the matter?” cried Rick.

“I’m afraid of danger,” was the answer. “I believe Ruddy is trying to warn us of something!”

And again the dog howled mournfully, as the car slackened speed.

CHAPTER VI
A WILD RIDE

Rick and Chot seemed to feel a thrill go through them at these words. What was going to happen? Something exciting they hoped. Perhaps robbers were going to “hold them up,” and certainly the scene was wild enough to imagine almost anything taking place.

“Quiet, Ruddy!” ordered Rick, for the dog was trying to leap from the car.

Suddenly there came a most vivid flash of lightning—brighter than any that had yet presaged the coming of the blast. It was followed by a clap of thunder, coming so closely after the glare as to indicate that the storm was very near—if not ready to break instantly.

And in that startling flare the occupants of the automobile saw something that caused them to gasp in fear.

The machine came to a stop not five feet from the broken bridge.

For the machine had come to a stop not five feet from the edge of a broken bridge—a bridge that spanned a deep and rocky ravine, and had they rolled into it not one might have escaped death.

For a moment no one spoke—even Ruddy ceased his howls and his frantic efforts to get out of the auto. And then, as another vivid flash came, and more details of the broken bridge impressed themselves on the visions of Mr. Campbell and the boys, there were gasps of relief at the danger escaped.

“Say,” exclaimed Chot with a show of righteous indignation, “it’s dangerous to have bridges like that—all broken. They ought to have some sort of a warning.”

“That’s right!” agreed Rick. “There ought to be a red lamp here!”

“There may have been,” said Mr. Campbell, “and the wind may have blown it out. I can’t believe any one who knew of this broken bridge would neglect to put out a warning sign. That is unless the bridge has just collapsed. We’ll take a look. But I think we owe our lives to Ruddy.”

“Do you think he knew about it?” asked Chot in an awed voice.

“It seems so; doesn’t it?” asked Rick. “He howled just at the right time to stop us; didn’t he?”

“He surely did,” agreed Mr. Campbell. “His howls and the queer way he acted convinced me that something was wrong which we couldn’t see or know about. So I thought it best to stop suddenly, though at the time I felt it might be a foolish and superstitious notion. But it wasn’t.”

“How do you s’pose Ruddy knew about it?” inquired Chot.

“Same as dogs know when a person’s going to die,” said Rick. “Dogs always howl the night before a person’s going to die.”

“Who told you that?” asked Mr. Campbell, as he prepared to alight from the car.

“Sartin Sure, the colored man who works for us—he told me,” said the boy. “He said he never knew it to fail, that when he heard a dog howl, the next day somebody would be dead.”

“That’s all bosh!” laughed Mr. Campbell. “I admit that a dog may howl in the night, and somewhere in our city a person may be dead next day. But that doesn’t prove anything. Dogs will howl more on moonlight nights than any other, but more persons don’t die on such nights than on nights when there is no moon.

“It’s just a coincidence—an accidental happening so to speak. Dogs can’t possibly know when a person is going to die—that is unless they are right with them, and perhaps a dog who has been associated with his master many years may then, in some strange way, sense when the end comes.”

“But don’t you think Ruddy knew about this broken bridge?” asked Rick.

Mr. Campbell was silent for a moment as he alighted from the auto, followed by Rick, Chot and Ruddy.

“Well,” came the answer at last, “I won’t say that he actually knew about it, in the way that we would have known had some one told us. But he must have sensed it, just as Ruddy may often have known, Rick, the moment you came in the house when he was asleep, though you may have entered so quietly as to make no noise.”

“Yes, I’ve had that happen,” admitted Rick.

“Well, perhaps in the same strange, mysterious way Ruddy may have sensed that there was something wrong with this bridge and he howled—the only way he had of warning us. And he certainly did warn us.”

“In time, too,” added Chot. “If you’d gone a few feet farther—”

He did not finish the sentence, but they all knew what he meant. In silence they walked to the edge of the broken bridge, and in the glare of the car headlights, which gleamed sufficiently when the lightning was not flashing more brightly, they saw what had happened.

The bridge was old and rotten—perhaps it would not have held up the weight of the auto—and the two main supporting beams had broken close to the end nearest the travelers. The bridge had fallen into the ravine, the farther end supported on the other side like a hinge. And as more lightning flashes came they revealed the sharp and jagged rocks below—rocks on which they would have been impaled and smashed but for Ruddy’s timely warning.

They talked it all over again—waiting there for the storm to break. They wondered how Ruddy could have known—they even wondered if he really did know. Was it not all just a coincidence? Was not Ruddy merely howling because he didn’t like lightning? And did not Mr. Campbell stop instinctively, as, perhaps, you have stopped suddenly, and for no reason when about to step into danger?

These were questions that never could be answered. So they gave up trying to find suitable replies, and patted Ruddy with thankful feelings in their hearts over their escape from danger. As for Ruddy, he seemed content, now that he had warned his friends, and howled no more.

There came another vivid glare of the sky-fireworks, followed by a resounding crash, at which Ruddy gave a little howl and snuggled closer to Rick. Then the silence that ensued was broken by a curious pattering sound all around the travelers who stood near the car.

“Rain!” exclaimed Rick.

“That’s right,” echoed Mr. Campbell. “We’d better get under cover.”

He led the way to the automobile and began getting out the side curtains from the overhead pocket beneath the top. The boys helped him, and though it was hard work to adjust them in the increasing wind and darkness, they managed to get them in place. The lightning was a hinderance rather than a help for though it was brilliantly light one moment, it was intensely dark the next, and the darkness lasted longer than did the light.

However they were finally as well protected as possible against the rain which came down with increasing volume as they worked at the side curtains, and when they were at last sheltered in the car there descended a veritable deluge.

“What are you going to do, Mr. Campbell?” asked Rick as the electric starter spun the fly wheel and set the engine in motion.

“I’m going to get off this road,” was the answer. “We can’t go any farther this way on account of the broken bridge. I don’t know any other back route to Elmwood. I was foolish to take this short cut. I should have stuck to the main road. But I guess we’ll find some place we can stay all night, for I think this storm is going to last and get worse.”

Certainly it seemed to bear out that prediction, for the wind, the rain, the thunder and lightning produced an effect that was not at all pleasant. Ruddy curled up in the rear among the blankets and baggage, and Rick and Chot almost wished they could forget everything as the dog seemed to be doing. He had no responsibility.

But Rick and Chot were not shirkers. They were willing to do all they could to help in this time of stress and trouble. They were not Boy Scouts for nothing. They wanted to play their parts like men if need arose. And so, as they sat on the front seat with Mr. Campbell—for there was room for all three—they were on the alert for any further danger that might come up.

Mr. Campbell began carefully backing the car to turn it, and this was not easily done as the road was narrow where it approached the bridge. Just as he got the machine around, and was about to start off, there was a crash behind and the sound of broken glass.

“What’s that?” cried the man at the wheel.

“We’ve smashed something,” said Rick. “I’ll see what it is.”

“Here, put your rain coat on and take a flash light,” ordered Mr. Campbell, reaching forward into one of the side pockets. “No use getting any wetter.”

The boys had brought rain coats with them. They were in the rear of the machine and Rick quickly donned his and slipped out back to see what had happened. In the flash of the pocket electric light he saw where the auto had backed into a pole that had held a red danger lantern. Doubtless this had been placed to warn travelers of the broken bridge, but the red light was out when our friends drove up.

“You ran right into it,” Rick explained to Mr. Campbell. “It’s all smashed—I mean the red lantern is.”

“Well, it had probably burned out, anyhow,” was his reply. “That’s why it gave us no warning. But I wish we had some way of letting others who might come along here know that the bridge is down. I’ll stop at the first house we pass and leave word. But meanwhile some one may happen to come this road, though it isn’t likely in the storm.”

“Couldn’t we put a rail, or something across the road?” suggested Chot. “I mean something that would break easy so it wouldn’t damage any car that ran into it. When they hit it they’d stop, and then they could see the broken bridge.”

“That’s a good idea,” said Mr. Campbell. “We’ll do it. As you say, they’ll stop when they crash into a light rail or small tree, and they won’t be going very fast—not on this road in this storm.”

It was not a very agreeable task to get out in the mud, water and darkness, amid glaring lightning and resounding thunder and fix some sort of warning. But at last they managed to span the road with a light barrier that would easily break when a car ran into it. And once a motorist crashed into this harmless obstruction he would, very likely, look ahead to see the reason it was placed across the road. Then he would discover the broken bridge.

“There, it’s the best we can do,” said Mr. Campbell as they entered the machine again. “Say,” he suddenly asked, “aren’t you boys hungry?”

“A little,” admitted Rick.

“Same here,” echoed Chot.

“Well, why didn’t you tell me?”

“We didn’t know you had anything to eat,” said Rick.

“I haven’t very much, but at the last place we stopped I had them put me up some sandwiches and a thermos bottle of hot chocolate. I reckon it will come in good now; eh?”

“Oh, boy!” murmured Chot.

“It’s better than a Thanksgiving turkey!” exclaimed Rick.

Mr. Campbell got out the little lunch, and never had an elaborate meal tasted better to the boys—or to Ruddy also, for he had his share of sandwich ends and was grateful.

Then, heartened and warmed—for the rain was cold in spite of the summer weather that had prevailed—they started off. If the road had been hard to travel earlier in the evening, before the rain, it was doubly so now.

The auto lurched and swayed from side to side. Now one wheel would descend into some mud hole and again another would slip into a miniature ravine, throwing all in the car to one side.

All the while the flood of rain kept up, the lightning glared and the thunder, at times, was almost deafening. The only occupant of the car on that wild ride, who seemed in comfort was Ruddy, well protected in the rear among the baggage.

“Let me know if any of you see a light ahead,” suggested Mr. Campbell to the boys. “I’ve got to keep my eyes on the road,” and as he spoke the steering wheel was almost jerked from his hands by the lurch of the car.

“Do you mean the lights of another auto coming?” asked Chot.

“Any glimmer at all,” was the answer. “What I’d like to see would be the lights of some hotel, or inn. We can’t travel this way all night. We’ve got to put up somewhere.”

They rode along for perhaps ten minutes more and then Rick suddenly called:

“I see a light!”

CHAPTER VII
THE LONELY CABIN

The car lurched again, went down on one side, as a front wheel sank into a mud hole, swung out as Mr. Campbell pulled it back on the firmer surface, and then came the question from the steersman:

“Where is it, Rick? That light?”

“Off to the left.”

“I don’t see anything,” Mr. Campbell said, “and I don’t dare take my eyes from the road long enough to look. What did it seem to be, Rick?”

“I don’t know—just a light, that’s all.”

“I see it, too!” suddenly cried Chot, and Ruddy roused up at the boys’ voices, and put his fore paws on the back of the front seat.

“Down, old fellow,” said Rick gently. “Don’t jump up again.”

Ruddy quieted and Mr. Campbell, slowing down the speed of the car, looked around.

“I see it,” he said. “Looks as if it were in a house, or something. Well, whatever it is, they ought to take us in. It’s dangerous to keep on in this storm.”

He drove slowly ahead and then, in the sheen from the auto headlights and the glare from the fitful lightning flashes the travelers saw a lonely cabin beside the road. From it came the cheerful gleam of light, and as the travelers drew nearer they could see that the gleam spread from a kerosene lamp on a table, about which, as they could see in through the window, were gathered three men.

“I don’t remember to have passed this place before,” said Mr. Campbell, as he guided the machine up to the door. “But maybe I didn’t notice it. Anyhow, it’s the best port we could make in this storm, if they’ll take us in. Whew! I believe it’s raining harder, if such a thing is possible!”

Indeed the storm was a regular deluge now. The thunder seemed dying away and the lightning was not so frequent and vivid, but the rain was beating down powerfully.

“Better stay in the car, boys, until I see if they will take us in,” suggested Mr. Campbell, as he got out. “It looks like a private house—or perhaps I’d better say shack—but maybe they’ll have room for us.”

However, Rick and Chot had already alighted from the car, believing their rain coats were protection enough. Ruddy followed them, a sad and bedraggled figure, his tail drooping between his legs.

Mr. Campbell advanced to the door and knocked, and Rick and Chot, standing where they could look in the window, saw the three men around the table where the lamp shone, start from their seats.

The boys also saw something else, for one of the men reached for a gun standing against a chair.

“Did you see that?” whispered Chot to Rick.

“Look out, Mr. Campbell,” warned Rick, not pausing to reply to his chum. “They have a gun!”

“Oh, that’s all right,” was the easy answer. “We’re getting into the west now, and when any one knocks on the door of a lonely cabin after dark the safest thing is to reach for a gun—not that you’ll have to use it, but just for safety’s sake.”

Silence followed the knock on the door—though it was not a complete silence, for there was the pelting of the rain that made a continuous low roar—and then came a hail from within the lonely cabin:

“Who’s there?”

“Strangers and travelers,” answered Mr. Campbell. “We’ve lost our way in the storm—the bridge is down just beyond here—”

Suddenly the door was flung open, and in the glare of the lamp the three men in the cabin gazed out into the rain-swept darkness. One of them held a gun in readiness, but when the gleam of the light fell on the forms of Rick, Ruddy and Chot, as well as on the friendly though wet and dripping face of Mr. Campbell, the weapon was laid aside.

“What’s that you say, stranger?” asked the foremost man. “Is the bridge over Rocky Gulch gone?”

“It’s down, yes, and but for the howling of our dog we might have gone down with it. There was a red light, but it was out, and we didn’t have any warning. Then we turned back in the storm, but we must have lost our way for I don’t remember to have passed this place before.”

“Very likely you didn’t,” was the comment. “It’s off the main road. But come in stranger, and bring the boys and dog with you. It’s no night for even a dog to be out in.”

It was a warm enough welcome coming from strangers, and the boys were very glad to enter the shack, Ruddy following his master.

“Is there any place around here where I can leave my car?” asked Mr. Campbell.

“Shed around back,” gruffly answered one of the men.

“And, if it isn’t asking too much, could we stay here for the night?” was the next request of Mr. Campbell. “We can stretch out on the floor, or sit around the fire, for that matter.”

“I guess we can put you up,” was the somewhat gruff answer from the man who had done most of the talking. “We’ve got some bunks—this is a hunter’s cabin, and—”

“But we’re not hunting now,” came the quick retort of another of the trio. “We know the game laws!”

“I’m not a warden,” laughed Mr. Campbell. “You have nothing to fear. I’ll just run the car under the shed, and then I’ll bring your bags in if you want them,” he added, for he thought Rick and Chot might want to don sleeping garments, as long as there were bunks for them to turn into.

“Oh, don’t bother,” said Rick. “We’re all right as we are, and the rain coats kept us dry—all but our feet and we can take off our shoes.”

“We’ve got a good fire,” said another of the men, and the boys saw the flames leaping and crackling in a fireplace as they advanced farther into the room.

Mr. Campbell ran the car around behind the lonely shack, where he found a rough shed that would afford some protection against the rain, and keep dry the baggage and other things in the car. Sensing that this was a sort of rough-and-ready stopping place, Mr. Campbell did not bring in any of his luggage or that of the boys’ either. They could take off some of their clothes and stretch out in the bunks, waiting for morning and, he hoped, the stopping of the storm.

When he again entered the cabin he found Rick and Chot drying their feet before the fire, their shoes having been removed, and Ruddy was stretched out basking in the genial warmth. The three men sat at the table, where they had been playing cards. Seemingly they were awaiting the reappearance of Mr. Campbell that he might give a further account of himself and his boy companions.

Mr. Campbell seemed to realize that an explanation was in order, for he told, without being asked, of his trip to San Francisco, and mentioned that he was taking Rick out to join Uncle Tod.

“You’ve got quite a ways yet to go,” observed the man who seemed to be the leader. He had introduced himself as Martin, and his companions as Elkton and Shadd. “We’re looking up some timber claims here,” he added, “and we got the use of this cabin. ’Tisn’t ours, but you’re welcome to stay, and we have some grub left.”

“Thanks,” said Mr. Campbell. “We don’t want to rob you, but a cup of hot coffee would go mighty well now—if you can spare it.”

“Sure!” said the man called Shadd. He seemed to be the cook, for soon, on a ramshackle stove in what was the kitchen of the shack, he had brewed steaming coffee that was most grateful to the tired, cold and damp travelers.

“Like some baked beans?” asked Shadd, when the coffee had been disposed of.

“Sure!” exclaimed Rick, at whom the question seemed to be directed.

“We got plenty of them, and some bread and butter,” went on the cook. “Might as well make a meal when you have the chance. I can give you bacon, too.”

“Say,” laughed Mr. Campbell, “this is a regular hotel.”

“Hardly that,” said Joe Martin, as the others called him, “but such as ’tis you’re welcome to.”

Seldom had a meal tasted better, for all three were very hungry in spite of the sandwiches and chocolate they had partaken of not long before.

And then as the rain kept up its pelting on the roof of the lonely shack, the boys sat and were permeated by the warmth of the blazing fire while Ruddy sighed in contentment. If Mr. Campbell was worried about the chance of keeping on next day, over rain-torn roads, he said nothing about it.

The shack was larger than it first appeared. There was the main room, where the fire blazed, a small kitchen and two other rooms, fitted with three bunks in each one. Mr. Campbell and the boys were given one bunk room for themselves, and the other was used by the lumbermen as they called themselves.

“Better turn in, boys,” suggested Mr. Campbell, as he noticed Rick and Chot nodding before the sleep-compelling blaze.

“I guess I will,” said Rick, and soon he and his chum, with Ruddy stretched out in a corner, were soundly slumbering. Mr. Campbell “turned in” a little later.

Rick’s last thoughts, as he dozed off in the fairly comfortable bunk, were of his Uncle Tod. He wondered why his mother’s relative had departed so suddenly after the receipt of the mysterious message. Also Rick wondered why Uncle Tod wanted him, another boy and Ruddy to come out west.

Puzzled thoughts over these questions seemed to follow Rick in his sleep, for he dreamed that he and Chot were trying to rescue Uncle Tod from the Indians who had unexpectedly started on the war path. Rick was dimly conscious that Ruddy was moving uneasily about in the night, and he also thought he felt the dog’s cold nose on his face as if Ruddy were trying to awaken him.

But Rick slept on, and so did Chot, until the morning sun streamed in through a window, betokening that the storm was over.

Then they heard Mr. Campbell calling them. He had left his bunk, and was in the main room, and, as he called, there was that in his voice which showed wonder and alarm.

CHAPTER VIII
“GONE!”

“Anything the matter?” asked Rick, as, followed by Ruddy and Chot he hastened from the bunk room into the main apartment where the cold gray ashes had replaced the cheerful, blazing fire of the night before.

“Anything wrong?” Chot wanted to know.

“Well, I don’t know that you could call it wrong,” said Mr. Campbell with a pat on Ruddy’s head, “but our hosts seem to have disappeared! Did you hear them go in the night?”

“Have the men left?” asked Rick.

“I don’t see any signs of them,” was the answer. “And I slept so heavily that I didn’t hear a sound. Did either of you?”

“I thought I felt Ruddy moving around in the night,” Rick answered. “But I didn’t wake up or hear anything.”

“Me either,” admitted Chot. “But, anyhow, it’s cleared off and we can travel along.”

“Yes, we can travel along,” said Mr. Campbell. “I don’t believe those men will care if I help myself to some of their coffee and grub. They were free enough with it last night. If they come back, and object, I’ll pay them.”

“Do you know where they have gone?” Rick wanted to know.

Mr. Campbell shook his head.

“I came out here as soon as I was up,” he explained, “and I saw no one. Then I knocked on the door of their bunk room, but there was no answer. I opened the door and looked in and they were gone.”

“Maybe they went out early to look up some trees,” suggested Chot.

“What do you mean—look up trees?” asked Rick. “Do you mean to look and see if there’s a bear to shoot?”

“No, I mean about cutting some lumber,” explained Chot.

“Oh,” exclaimed his chum. “I see.”

“It’s possible they did that,” said Mr. Campbell. “Of course they have a right to do as they please, but they might have left a note or something to say they’d be back. But it’s their business, I reckon. And I’m going to see what sort of a breakfast I can get.”

“We’ll help,” offered Rick and Chot.

Coffee was soon boiling on the stove, and bacon was sizzling in the pan. By rummaging further in a pantry Mr. Campbell found some prepared flour and, declaring that he was a master-hand at turning flapjacks, he proved it by setting before the boys two plates of delicately-browned pancakes.

“There’s even maple syrup, or what passes for it, to eat on them,” he said, producing a sticky brown bottle.

“Oh, boy!” cried Rick.

“Can’t beat this—not even at home!” declared Chot, and they kept Mr. Campbell busy over the frying pan which he used in place of a pancake griddle. He did not neglect himself, however, and soon all three—no, all four, for Ruddy was not forgotten—had eaten a good breakfast.

“Well, since our friends don’t seem to be coming back, we’ll have to write a note and express our thanks for their hospitality,” said Mr. Campbell, after the meal. “Then we’ll start off again, but I don’t imagine we’ll make very good time until we get on the main road. This rain must have made more mud puddles than usual.”

“We’ll wash the dishes while you’re writing the note,” suggested Rick, for, like all Boy Scouts, he had been taught to leave a place as he found it, and the dishes were clean in the cupboard at the start of breakfast.

There was a tank of warm water connected with the stove, and the dishes were soon being given a sort of rough-and-ready bath. But campers are never fussy—if they were they wouldn’t be campers.

“There, this will thank them for having taken us in,” said Mr. Campbell, as he finished the note to the three men. “I’ll leave it on the table where they’ll see it when they come back. I’ve given them my address in San Francisco,” he added, “and if they want to send us a bill for breakfast I’ll settle it later. But I don’t believe they will. Now I’ll go out and get the car.”

The shed was out of sight behind the shack, and the boys waited a few minutes in front of the cabin to hear the hum of the motor as the self-starter turned it over.

But no such hum sounded and Rick and Chot, who were playing with Ruddy, paused in their fun after a few minutes, looking at each other while Rick said:

“Must have trouble getting her going.”

“Cold after the rain, maybe,” suggested Chot.

“Or there might be water in the carburetor,” said Rick.

They were about to walk around the shack to see if they could be of any help in turning on the ignition, as Mr. Campbell might have to crank the car, when they saw their friend coming around the path that led from the cabin to the shed.

“Boys, did you hear the auto being taken out in the night?” he asked.

“The auto taken?” cried Rick. “No!”

“Isn’t it there?” asked Chot.

“No,” answered Mr. Campbell.

“Where is it?” cried the boys.

“Gone!”

“Gone?”

“Stolen, I reckon,” said the owner grimly, “and I think I can guess who took it.”

“You mean the three men who were here?” asked Rick.

“I’m afraid so—yes. That’s why they sneaked off so quietly. They wanted to get away in my car. All our stuff gone, too! The car’s insured but there’s my baggage, and yours, and a lot of valuable documents and a patent model I was taking to San Francisco.”

“Whew!” whistled Rick, and Ruddy came running up wondering what his young master wanted, for the whistle sounded like a signal.

“What are you going to do?” asked Chot.

“We’ll have to take after them,” said Mr. Campbell. “I can’t let them get away with my things like this! And I must get back your baggage, also. That’s the time we slept too soundly, lads! Those scoundrels just sneaked out when we were in dreamland and took our car. Well, there’s no use staying here. We’ll have to walk to the nearest town and let the police know about the robbery. They must have some telephones and telegraph lines out here, and maybe we can head off the thieves.”

“How could they get the car out without starting it up?” asked Rick. “Your motor makes quite a noise when it starts, Mr. Campbell, and I should think we’d have heard it.”

“That’s just it—they didn’t start the motor,” was the reply.

“Then how’d they run it off?”

“They just took off the brake and let her coast down hill,” was the answer. “There’s a hill leading up into the shed. I noticed it when I went in last night. All they had to do was to let the car roll down hill—it would coast all the way to the road, I think. And that was far enough off so that when they turned on the ignition, as the car was still moving, she started without the racket she usually makes. Come and I’ll show you.”

He indicated to the boys the marks of the tires in the soft ground—marks that showed where Mr. Campbell had driven in, and then where the car had been pushed out, steered down to the road under gravity and finally driven off.

“Hard luck, but there’s no use worrying,” said Mr. Campbell, who was a sort of optimistic philosopher. “We’ll just have to take after ’em—that’s all.”

“Maybe we can trace the car by the tire tracks,” said Rick. “There aren’t many cars out this way, Mr. Campbell.”

“Yes, perhaps we can, Rick. Well, let’s get started.”

They headed away from the shed, aiming to pass around the cabin and take to the road. But, as they filed along the path, with Ruddy running ahead, Chot suddenly called:

“I hear a car coming!”

“Maybe they are coming back,” suggested Rick.

They pressed forward eagerly.

CHAPTER IX
THE PURSUIT

Just as Mr. Campbell and the boys reached the front of the shack in which they had spent the night, they saw, stopping in the road a short distance away, an automobile of the flivver type—old, ramshackle, rusty and covered with mud.

From this battered car leaped several men, each one bearing a gun, and it took no more than a second glance to reveal to Rick and the others that these were not Martin, Elkton and Shadd, the self-styled “lumbermen.”

Ruddy stopped, stiffened into attention and began to growl in a menacing manner.

“Quiet, Ruddy,” sharply ordered his master and the dog obeyed.

The men ran forward, with guns held in readiness, but before they could shoot, if, indeed, such was their intention, and before anything could be said, another car followed the first and stopped suddenly.

From this second car leaped three men who seemed anxious to overtake the first party, numbering five, who were advancing on Mr. Campbell and the boys.

“Now we’ve got you!” cried the leader of the first party, as he began lowering his gun in readiness for action. “Up with your hands!”

“Why, what in the world—” began Mr. Campbell. He said afterward he thought it was all a joke, and Rick was beginning to wonder if this had anything to do with the mystery of Uncle Tod, when the second party of three men overtook the first five, and the evident leader of this trio shouted:

“Wait a minute, Bert! You’re making a mistake!”

“A mistake?” inquired the man who had ordered “hands up.”

“Yes, this is the wrong crowd—can’t you see that. Two of ’em are boys and there’s a dog!”

“I see the boys and dog all right,” grumbled the one who had given the startling order, “but they may belong to the same bunch all right.”

“I’m afraid not,” said the other. “Looks like they got away—give us the slip. Your name Cassidy?” he asked sharply of Mr. Campbell.

“No, it isn’t,” was the quiet answer. “But what’s this all about, anyhow? And where can we get in touch with the police or some one in authority?”

“What for? Have you captured the robbers?” asked one of the raiding party eagerly.

“Robbers?” exclaimed Rick and Chot who were taking all this in with wondering eyes.

“As far as robberies go we have one to report ourselves,” said Mr. Campbell. “My auto was taken, during the night, by three men who were in this shack.”

“And those are the very men we’re after!” exclaimed the leader of the last-arriving trio. “Where are they? Which way did they go? If they have your car, and it can travel, we may have hard work catching up to them.”

“I’m afraid you will,” said Mr. Campbell, grimly. “But where can I report the theft of my car? Where will I find an officer?”

“Right here,” answered the leader of the five men with a chuckle. “We’re all officers. That’s Nick Wilson, a deputy sheriff,” he added, indicating the big man who had arrived in the car with two others. “I’m a court-house constable and these others are special deputies we just swore in to help capture the bank robbers.”

“Bank robbers?” exclaimed Mr. Campbell. “Were Martin, Elkton and Shadd robbers?”

“They were, and desperate ones, too, only those aren’t their names,” said Deputy Sheriff Wilson. “I guess they go by any names that suit ’em, but one of ’em is Cassidy, and the other two are Burke and Armstrong. They robbed the Frenchtown bank of over fifty thousand dollars last week, and they have been traced to this locality.

“Early this morning we got word that three men, answering the description of the bank robbers, were out here in this shack. I rounded up all the men I could find. Dodge, here, got a little ahead of me,” said the deputy sheriff with a grin, “but as soon as I saw the two boys I knew we were barking up the wrong tree. And so the robbers took your car and got away; did they?”

“It looks so,” admitted Mr. Campbell ruefully.

“Too bad,” said Nick Wilson. “If you could only have held those fellows you’d have been in the reward of ten thousand dollars.”

Rick and Chot gasped at this.

“No use thinking about that now,” said Mr. Campbell philosophically. “I’ll be satisfied if I can get my car back, and the stuff in it—including the baggage of these boys. I’m on my way to San Francisco, and Rick and Chot—not to forget Ruddy—are going out to their Uncle Tod.”

“He isn’t my uncle,” said Chot.

“Well, it’s all the same,” explained Mr. Campbell with a smile. And then, briefly, he told the officers of how they were caught in the storm at the broken bridge, and how they had happened to stop at the lonely cabin.

In turn the deputy sheriff related the story of the daring bank robbery. The three men, presumably having most of the money with them, had come to this hunters’ cabin to hide. They had, doubtless, seen their opportunity to escape in an auto when Mr. Campbell and the boys drove up in their car.

Welcoming the travelers and making them feel at home had lulled our friends’ suspicions and during the night the robbers had quietly slipped out and departed in the Campbell car with their booty.

“And to think we just snoozed and let them get away!” cried Rick.

“Isn’t it tough!” bewailed Chot.

“Well, maybe it isn’t too late yet!” eagerly suggested Bert Dodge, the court-house constable. “Let’s take after ’em!”

“I guess we’d better,” assented the deputy. “We’ll try to get your car back,” he added to Mr. Campbell. “You can come along with me if you want to,” he added. “Guess I can make room for you.”

“What about the boys?” asked Mr. Campbell.

Nick Wilson tilted back his hat from his grizzled hair and scratched his head.

“It’s going to be a pretty tight fit,” he admitted as he looked at the battered and muddy car of the constable, and at his own not much better and no larger auto. “Yes, it’ll be a pretty tight fit, to say nothing of the dog.”

“I can’t leave Ruddy!” exclaimed Rick.

“I’d like to go with the officers,” remarked Mr. Campbell. “I can then identify my car if we find it. But, even if there were room, I’d rather you boys wouldn’t come. There may be shooting—”

“There will be if we get within distance!” declared Mr. Dodge, grimly.

“If you boys wouldn’t mind waiting here,” suggested Mr. Campbell, “it would be better, maybe. I know it’s rather hard luck,” he added with a smile, as he saw the rueful look on Chot’s face, “but it’s what I think your folks would want, and I’m responsible for you.”

“Oh, we’ll stay,” offered Rick cheerfully. “I wouldn’t go, anywhere, and leave Ruddy behind.”

“Tell you what,” broke in Mr. Wilson, “you boys go back to town and wait for me at my office. You can tell the sheriff how things turned out, and that will save us time telephoning, ’specially as there isn’t a line around here. Go back to my office in the court-house and wait. Here, I’ll give you a note to show it’s all right.”

He scribbled something on the back of an envelope and passed it to Rick. Meanwhile the special deputies were quickly scrambling into the autos, Mr. Campbell being invited to ride with Nick Wilson and his two helpers, while Bert and his four filled the muddy, ramshackle, rusty flivver that he owned.

“I’ll be back as soon as I can, boys,” called Mr. Campbell to Rick and Chot. “We couldn’t go on, anyhow, until I get my car again.”

“Oh, that’s all right,” Rick assured him. “We’ll wait in town for you. How far back is it?” he asked the deputy sheriff.

“’Bout three miles.”

“That isn’t far,” admitted Chot.

“And when you get hungry go to my house and tell my wife I sent you,” went on the deputy. “She’ll give you a good meal!”

That sounded very encouraging to the boys who had not had anything very substantial since dinner the day before.

Rick, Chot and Ruddy stood in the road in front of the shack, and watched the officers start in pursuit of the robbers. How much the two lads wished they could have had a part in the man-hunt, only you boys can imagine. But it would not have been wise.

“I hope they get ’em,” murmured Chot, as the two rattling cars vanished around a turn in the highway.

“So do I,” echoed Rick. “If they do, maybe Mr. Campbell will get part of the reward.”

“How?”

“Well, the robbers took his car and he gave information about them. He ought to get part of the reward.”

“That’s right. I hope he does. Well, let’s go on to town. What’s the name of the place, anyhow? It can’t be Elmwood, for we were heading for that when we got to the broken bridge.”

“No, it’s Fayetville I heard one of the men say. Well, I hope this Mrs. Wilson is a good cook,” and Rick sighed.

“Will you go to her house for a meal?”

“Sure! Why not? Didn’t Mr. Wilson tell us to? And it will be better than going to a restaurant. We can wash up and comb our hair. I feel like a tramp.”

“So do I. Yet, I guess it will be better to go to her house. I’m hungry.”

“So’m I. Well, come on.”

The boys and the dog started down the road, while the two flivvers, filled with eager officers, kept on in pursuit of the criminals, pausing now and then at some lonely farm house to ask if the Campbell car had passed.

CHAPTER X
A STRANGE DISCOVERY

Great excitement was caused in the Fayetville court-house when the boys arrived with the scribbled note from Deputy Sheriff Wilson, and the news that the posse was, even then, on the trail of the bank robbers. The sheriff himself came out of his office to talk to the boys, asking them for all the details they could give him.

“Guess I’d better send some more deputies to help Nick and Bert,” said the county official. “Those robbers are desperate fellows, and now they have a car it’s going to be harder to catch them.”

“They not only have a car, but they’ve got the things we were going to camp with,” lamented Chot.

“Well, as long as they didn’t take us—and Ruddy, we ought to be glad,” laughed Rick.

“That’s right,” said the sheriff. “They are desperate characters. No wonder they were suspicions of you when you came on them in the storm. But they were quick to see that their best plan was to let you in, allow you to sleep and then sneak off in your car. However, we’ll get ’em all right. I’ll telephone to all the places around here to be on the watch. Just give me a description of Mr. Campbell’s machine so I can let other sheriffs and police officers know what to look for.”

Between them Rick and Chot supplied a good description, even to the numbers on the license plates, and this information was soon being sent broadcast by telephone and telegraph.

“Well, do you boys want to sit around here and wait for Mr. Campbell to come back?” asked Sheriff Hart, “or what do you want to do?”

“Mr. Wilson said something about going to his house,” began Rick, “and if we could—”

Just then the telephone in the sheriff’s office, where this talk was taking place, began ringing violently.

“Hello—hello!” cried the sheriff as he snatched off the receiver. He listened intently, saying, meanwhile—“yes—yes! Good! I hope you do! Yes, they’re here! I’ll send them up!”

He turned to the boys.

“That was Nick Wilson,” he said as he hung up the receiver. “He says they haven’t got any trace of the robbers yet, but they hope to, soon, and he says to tell you to go on up to his house and eat. I’ll telephone Mrs. Wilson you’re coming.”

“How do you get there?” asked Rick, for they were in a strange town.

“I’ll take you up in my car,” the sheriff offered. “Nick wants me to tell his wife he won’t be home to dinner. And that will be a good opening for me to suggest that you boys can take his place at the table,” he added with a chuckle.

“I guess we’re willing,” said Rick, smiling, and Chot did his share.

On the way to the home of the deputy sheriff, Chot suggested that something had better be done about putting a permanent warning at the broken bridge, and the sheriff promised to attend to that.

Mrs. Wilson proved to be a motherly woman, after the boys’ own hearts. She made them warmly welcome, and soon became as friendly with Ruddy, as the red setter was with her.

“And oh, boy! What a dinner we had!” said Rick afterward with a grateful sigh to his chum. “Didn’t we?”

“I’ll tell the knives and forks!” echoed Chot with a grin.

The boys began to fear that time would hang rather heavily on their hands that afternoon, as the dinner hour came and went and there was no word from Mr. Campbell. They accepted the invitation of the sheriff to come to the court-house for a while, there to await possible word of the capture of the robbers.

But as the afternoon wore on, and there was no news of any account, save that those in pursuit were still on the trail, following different clews, the boys decided that it would be more fun to wander off by themselves.

“Take a trolley ride,” advised the sheriff. “The trolley goes several miles out into the country. You can scout around there and come back when you get ready. I reckon you’ll have to stay here all night, anyhow, for, even if we do get Mr. Campbell’s car back he won’t hardly want to start off without having it looked over. Those robbers’ll drive it hard.”

This seemed good advice and the boys took it. Very likely Mr. Campbell would not want to start right out again, even if those in pursuit were lucky enough to overtake, or find the robbers where they might be hiding.

Promising to come back to Mrs. Wilson’s house, where they were invited to remain for the night, Rick and Chot started off on the suburban trolley line. To his howling regret Ruddy could not accompany the boys, but was tied up in a shed at the Wilson home. However the red setter was somewhat reconciled to his lot when Mrs. Wilson provided him with plenty of bones to gnaw. Dogs, especially of Ruddy’s size, were not allowed on trolley cars.

“Well, we certainly are running into a bunch of things,” remarked Chot to his chum as they went riding out through the pleasant country—for it was very pleasant, fresh and delightful after the rain.

“We sure are!” agreed Rick. “Are you glad you came?” He leaned over and punched Chot playfully in the ribs.

“Am I? Say, you couldn’t beat it! And think of what’s ahead of us, Rick!”

“What do you mean?” Rick turned and looked at his chum.

“I mean out at Uncle Tod’s camp.”

“That’s right. There’ll be lots to do there. I wish I knew just what he wants of us.”

“Maybe he just did it so we could have a good vacation.”

“No, it’s more than that,” Rick declared. “He wouldn’t start off the way he did unless there was something up—and something queer, too. I’d like to know what it is.”

“So would I,” agreed Chot. “I hope waiting around like this won’t spoil it.”

“I hope not,” murmured Rick. “Anyhow it’s a nice day.”

And it certainly was. The sun was warmly shining, rapidly drying up the mud puddles left by the recent storm. It was warm, but not hot and the boys thoroughly enjoyed the trolley ride through the green country which lay outside of Fayetville, a prosperous city in the midst of a rich farming community.

“How far do you boys want to go?” asked the conductor, as he came in to collect the fourth or fifth fare, the boys could not remember which, for the line was divided into zones, and the fare was taken up for each one.

“Oh, we’re just riding for fun,” explained Rick.

“To sort of kill time,” added Chot.

“Is there anything to see around here?” Rick wanted to know. “I mean a waterfall, or anything like that?”

“Well, there’s a sort of cave about a mile from here,” the conductor said. “It’s off the main road and it’s quite a curiosity. Sometimes on Saturdays picnic parties go there, but not many during the week. It’s about a mile from the trolley.”

“Let’s go there,” proposed Rick to his chum. “Can we get a car back to Fayetville before night?” he inquired.

“Oh, yes,” answered the conductor. “We run every half hour up to seven o’clock and every hour after that. I’ll tell you where to get off.”

The ride seemed more enjoyable now that the boys had a definite object in view, and they eagerly awaited word from the conductor when to alight and start across the fields and through a patch of woods, on a short cut to the cave, a local curiosity.

“Here you are, boys!” finally called the puller of the bell rope, as the car came to a stop amid the squeaking of brakes. “Just follow the path and you can’t miss the cave. There’s a wagon road that goes up to it, but that’s longer. You can come back the same way you go, as the cars always stop here about on the even hours and half hours so you’ll know how to time yourselves.”

“Thanks,” murmured Rick and Chot and they struck into a field of daisies and buttercups which they must traverse, as well as a patch of woods, before reaching the cave.

“Crackie, but this is great!” exclaimed Chot as he ran and jumped on the springy turf.

“Nothing better!” agreed Rick, and he turned a hand spring in the abundance of his good feeling. Then Rick saw something down in the grass which he began pulling up and chewing.

“What is it?” asked Chot.

“Sheep sorrel,” was the answer. “I like a bit of sour stuff.”

“So do I,” agreed his chum, and soon they were chewing the tender light green leaves of the sorrel, a plant not unlike the Irish shamrock in shape of foliage, but quite different in character.

A little of this “sour grass,” however, was enough for the boys, and they looked for other things with which they were familiar. They crossed the field, and before striking into the woods came to a sluggish brook.

“’Tisn’t big enough to have a swim in,” said Chot, regretfully.

“No, and doesn’t look clean enough,” added Rick. “But there’s some sweet flag,” he went on eagerly. “Let’s pull some.”

In a place where the brook widened out into a swampy place grew tall spears of green, not unlike the foliage of “cat tails,” those brown drum-sticks that many persons gather for ornaments. However these green spears were of a different character, for their roots formed the medicinal calamus, called by country folk “sweet flag.” Calamus has a pleasant taste, though it is rather biting if taken in too great quantity. The root, dried, is often used in medicine, and old-fashioned people used to carry a bit in their pockets to nibble.

When I was a boy I would gather sweet flag, cut the roots into thin sections and bake it in the oven with sugar. It was better this way, though too much of it was not good for one.

Rick and Chot pulled some of the green stalks and ate the tender inner part that was not as strong as the actual root itself. They also found watercress, but this was not good without salt and they passed it by.

In the woods they discovered sassafras and birch bark, nibbling some of each and they also saw a lone crow which mournfully cawed at them, reminding Rick of the crow Ruddy had once found in the wood disabled, which black bird Rick had taken home and tamed, naming it “Haw Haw.”

Finally the boys emerged from the wood and came to a lonely road, which did not show signs of much travel.

“This must be the road where the cave is,” suggested Chot.

“I guess so,” agreed Rick.

They walked along it for about a quarter of a mile, following the trolley car conductor’s directions, and then turned into a gully, up which, they had been told, was the cave.

And, as they turned into this gully, or gulch the boys saw in the soft earth of the road, the marks of automobile tires.

“Look! Look at that!” cried Chot excitedly.

“They’re just like the tires on Mr. Campbell’s car,” added Rick.

Eagerly they ran on, turning into the rocky and weed-choked road that led from the main highway into the gulch. And they had no more than swung around the turn than they made a strange discovery.

For there, in front of them, was an automobile turned on its side. And it needed but a second glance to make them aware that it was Mr. Campbell’s car. It bore his license plates, and among the baggage spilled from it were the boys’ valises.

In front of them was an automobile turned on its side.

CHAPTER XI
UNCLE TOD’S CAMP

For several seconds Rick and Chot stood there silent—gazing at the astonishing sight which met their eyes. For it was astonishing—to think that they should thus unexpectedly come upon the stolen auto for which so many officers were searching.

Good luck had attended their whim to take a trolley ride and visit the cave. But now all interest in the cave vanished. Their whole attention was centred on the overturned auto, which lay on one side in a tangle of bushes and small trees.

“They tried to make too short a turn and upset,” was Rick’s opinion.

“Yes,” agreed Chot as an examination of the ground, showing where the wheels had skidded in soft sand and mud, bore this idea out.

Then a new thought came to the boys, though Rick was the first to express it.

“Maybe they’re there now,” he said. “Under the car.”

“Dead?” asked Chot in an awed voice.

“Maybe.”

“Let’s look.”

“Better not.”

“Why?”

“The coroner, or somebody like that, always has to be first to look at a dead body. That’s the law.”

It wasn’t, exactly, but it was near enough.

“But maybe some of ’em are there—hurt,” suggested Chot. “If they are we’d better—”

“I’m not going to get shot!” objected his chum. “They’ve got guns, it’s likely.”

“They can’t shoot if they’re hurt,” reasoned Chot. “Come on, let’s look.”

“I wish we had Ruddy here,” voiced Rick.

“It would be better,” agreed his chum. “But I reckon it’s all right; I don’t hear a sound, and if any of ’em was hurt we’d hear groans.”

“Unless they were unconscious,” Rick said.

However they listened and heard not so much as a whisper coming from the overturned car. Then they plucked up courage to go nearer. Still no sound—no motion—nothing.

“The car isn’t broken much, as far as I can see,” said Rick in a low voice.

“That’s good—maybe it’ll run after its turned right side up,” spoke Chot.

They had now approached close enough to make sure that no one—certainly no wounded or injured bank robbers—were in the overturned car. There was a little pool of blood on the ground, however, which seemed to indicate that some one had been hurt. But of the men there was not a trace. And, as far as the boys could see, none of their baggage or Mr. Campbell’s was missing—at least none of the large pieces.

“Maybe they’re hiding in the cave,” suggested Chot.

“Who?”

“The bank robbers.”

“That’s so,” agreed Rick, with an uneasy glance at the dark and brush-choked entrance to the cavern. “If Ruddy was here he could soon tell.”

“But if he went in they might shoot him.”

“That’s right. I’m glad we didn’t bring him. Say, we’d better go back and tell the sheriff about this.”

“Sure we had,” assented the other lad. Pausing only long enough to walk around the car again, and to make sure that most, if not all of their belongings were there, the boys hurried back through the woods, across the fields and to the place where they had alighted from the trolley car. They were lucky enough to see coming the very electric vehicle they had taken out from Fayetville.

“You didn’t stay long at the cave,” remarked the conductor, who was on his return trip.

“No, but we found something,” said Rick, and they told their story.

“You’d better telephone in when we get to Roseland,” suggested the trolley man, naming the nearest village. “Then you can wait and take the sheriff right to the place.”

It seemed sound advice and the boys followed it. The sheriff was astonished and, in a measure, disappointed at the news. Astonished because no one of his officers had thought of looking in the direction of the cave, and disappointed because it was evident that the robbers had escaped. They had probably fled when the car overturned, injuring one of them, if not more.

“Unless maybe they’re in the cave,” suggested Rick over the telephone.

“We’ll soon find that out,” said the sheriff grimly.

The boys waited in the Roseland store from which they had telephoned, the sheriff telling them he would call for them there and take them on to the cave. And Rick and Chot were the centre of a group of wondering and eager men and boys who gathered when news spread of the locating of the car in which the robbers had fled.

In due time Sheriff Hart and some of his constables arrived, and a small cavalcade followed him and his party out to the cave. There were some tense moments as officers, with ready guns, entered the cavern calling on the robbers to surrender. But there was no answer, and no shots and when lights were brought and the cave examined there was no trace of the criminals.

“Probably they didn’t go in there at all,” said the sheriff. “They may have headed for this hiding place, but when they turned too quick, and upset, they just naturally scattered. Well, we’ll get ’em yet!”

Many hands made light work of righting the overturned auto, which, aside from some dents and scratches, was little the worse for what had happened. It was in running order and one of the officers drove it back to Fayetville, much to the delight of Rick and Chot.

When the party of which Mr. Campbell was an unofficial member next telephoned to the court-house, asking for news and reporting that they had none to impart, the finding of the auto was related to them, and they were advised to return and take up the search from the cave; looking for men afoot rather than for a trio of bank robbers in an auto.

“Well, boys, you certainly brought me good luck!” exclaimed Mr. Campbell as he greeted Rick and Chot on his return. “I had about given up my car, and all in it, as gone forever. But there isn’t a thing missing of any account, and though the machine is a bit battered she’ll run all right.”

Some slight repairs were needed and it was decided that the boys and Mr. Campbell would remain over night in Fayetville, going on next day. Meanwhile the search for the robbers was continued by the sheriff and his officers.

It was assumed that the bank looters had intended to hide in the cave with the auto until it was safe to venture out and depart for some other locality. But fate had played against them, as it did to the end, for, eventually, they were caught and sentenced to long terms in prison.

Rick and Chot hoped they might find some of the stolen money in the auto, for they wished the thrill of returning it to the rightful owners, but this was not to be. There was not so much as a stray penny.

“Well, I guess we’re ready to start off once more,” said Mr. Campbell next day when the auto had been put in good order and repacked with their belongings. “Uncle Tod will be wondering what has become of you,” he added.

“Mother wrote and told him we might be delayed on the road,” said Rick. “But I’ll be glad to get to his camp.”

“So’ll I,” added Chot.

“Not but what we’re having a dandy time!” Rick hastened to say, for fear Mr. Campbell might think he was not grateful. “But I want to find out what it is Uncle Tod wants us to do.”

“I don’t blame you,” said Mr. Campbell.

“I don’t believe anything more exciting can happen there than what we’ve already had,” said Chot.

But he was mistaken, as he had to admit later.

The next two days were rather quiet ones. The party, including Ruddy, of course, who was glad to be back with his master and the latter’s chum, journeyed on, up over the mountain passes and soon found themselves in the Great West. I use capitals because that is how it always impresses me and how it impressed Rick and Chot. They had never been there before and it was a wonderful revelation to them.

“Well, I shall hate to lose you boys—you’ve been jolly good traveling companions,” said Mr. Campbell when, one afternoon, they reached the town nearest to where Uncle Tod had said he could be found.

“We’ll miss you, too,” said Rick. “But I guess we’ll find plenty to do.”

“I haven’t any doubt of it,” chuckled Mr. Campbell. “Well, we’d better stop here and inquire how to get to your uncle’s place,” he remarked, as they reached a forked road in a lonely section. “We don’t want to run up against any more broken bridges.”

They saw approaching a man riding a mule—a man who looked to be a typical prospector or miner. Hung about him, fore and aft on the saddle was a collection of implements and camp stuff—a kettle, frying pan, shovel, pick and a roll of what might be a pup tent and bedding.

“Good afternoon, strangers,” greeted the prospector, pleasantly.

Mr. Campbell returned the salutation and asked:

“Do you know where a Mr. Belmont has a camp around here? A Mr. Toddingham Belmont?”

“Toddingham Belmont,” repeated the prospector in puzzled accents.

“Uncle Tod I call him,” said Rick.

“Oh, him—Uncle Tod! Yes, yes! Now I know who you mean! Uncle Tod, oh, yes!” and he laughed. “His camp’s about a mile beyond that lone pine,” he said, pointing up the trail. “He and Sam Rockford are there—if you want to find them,” he added after a significant pause.

“Why shouldn’t we want to find them?” asked Mr. Campbell, struck by a queer expression on the prospector’s face. “We have come a long way to locate them—at least these boys have.”

“Oh, all right. It’s none of my business,” said the other quickly. “Of course if you want to throw in with a couple of—crazy loons—why, that’s your affair—not mine.”

“Crazy loons!” exclaimed Mr. Campbell, “what do you mean?”

“Well you ask anybody around here if a couple of men trying to wait for Lost River to come back, aren’t crazy, and if they don’t say they are, I’ll eat my mule’s ears—that’s what I’ll do!” offered the prospector. “As crazy as loons—that’s what they are! I’ll eat my mule’s ears! I sure will!”

CHAPTER XII
LOST RIVER

Not knowing exactly how to reply to this sort of talk, and hardly understanding what the man meant by it, Rick and Chot said nothing. Mr. Campbell was silent for a moment, looking at the prospector on his mule as he made off down the mountain trail.

“So you think Uncle Tod is crazy, eh?” finally asked Mr. Campbell.

“I don’t think it—I know it,” came the answer with a chuckle. “And so’s Sam Rockford—he’s crazier than Tod if such a thing can be. Go on, Salamander!” This last was called to the mule which ambled on with many a clatter and clang of the prospector’s outfit.

“Well, boys, does this discourage you?” asked Mr. Campbell, when the old man and his mule were out of sight around a turn in the trail.

“It does not!” cried Rick, cheerfully. “Once upon a time I thought Uncle Tod was crazy, but it turned out all right.”

“And I have no doubt but what it will this time, Rick. We’ll go on to your uncle’s camp. I’m glad we have found it with no further trouble,” said Mr. Campbell.

“I’m afraid we’ve been quite a bother to you, Mr. Campbell,” remarked Rick, as the auto was again sent climbing the mountain trail.

“Oh, not at all,” was the answer. “In fact you have been good company for me. It would have been mighty lonesome coming all this distance alone, and I didn’t have to get much off my trail to come here. It’s been a pleasure.”

“Well, we had fun out of it, anyhow,” said Chot. “But say, what do you s’pose he means, saying your Uncle Tod and that other man are crazy?” asked Chot of Rick.

“I don’t know,” was the reply. “I never heard of this Sam Rockford, though my folks may know him.”

“I suppose he is your uncle’s partner,” suggested Mr. Campbell. “As for this prospector saying other people are crazy—well, I’ve had some experience out here in the west. There is a class of man who, as soon as some one differs from them, at once jump to the idea that the other fellow is as crazy as a loon. Maybe the other man doesn’t do his mining in the same way as do most of the miners—the result is he gets the name of being crazy.

“And from what you tell me of your Uncle Tod, Rick, I’d say he wouldn’t follow in the same old rut if he found a better way to do a job. He’d take a new trail and that might result in his being called crazy.”

“I guess that’s it,” agreed Rick.

“So don’t pay too much attention to what this prospector said,” went on Mr. Campbell with a laugh.

“I should say not!” agreed Chot. “We’re out here for a good time!”

“But I guess Uncle Tod wants us to help him do something,” said Rick, “though I don’t know what it is.”

“We’ll soon find out,” remarked Mr. Campbell.

Following the directions given them by the prospector aboard the mountain-climbing mule Salamander, the three in the auto kept on up the trail, which wound over a fairly good road. They made quite an ascent, and then dipped down into a valley—a pleasant valley which seemed as though it ought to have a stream running through it. But there was no sign of water, save, here and there, small pools, while in other places there were indications of brooks that had dried up, leaving only a bed of stones and gravel.

Emerging from a patch of woods, the road forked sharply and as the prospector had said nothing about this, Mr. Campbell stopped, uncertain which turning to take.

“Well, boys, what is it, left or right?” he asked. There was no sign-post or other travelers’ signal to guide them.

Neither Rick nor Chot could tell as they had never been here before, nor had their companion. It was getting late in the afternoon, and Mr. Campbell was anxious to drive the boys to Uncle Tod’s camp by night, for he was in somewhat of a hurry to get back on his own trail, that would lead him to San Francisco.

“I think that prospector was crazy, if you ask me,” remarked Chot, as they looked undecidedly at the forking road. “Why didn’t he tell us which trail to take?”

“He might have, and not strained his intellect,” chuckled Mr. Campbell.

“Say!” suddenly cried Rick, “isn’t that a flag up there?”

He pointed off toward the hilly side of the valley at the left.

The others strained their eyes and Chot made out something fluttering through the leafy branches of trees.

“It does look like a flag,” he said.

Mr. Campbell had field glasses in the car and, taking an observation through them, he was able to declare:

“It is a flag flying. Some one must be there, and though it may not be your Uncle Tod they perhaps can tell us where to find him. We’ll head for the flag.”

This they did, taking the left trail, and a little later they came to a sort of plateau jutting out from the sloping side of the mountain valley. On this plateau, or shelf, which was several miles in extent, was located a camp, consisting of a comfortable-looking log cabin, a small tent and a slab shack, open on one side. In this shack stood a mule that might have been a twin to Salamander, and a battered and rusty flivver. Scattered about were various objects—picks, shovels and some pieces of apparatus the use of which Rick and Chot could only guess at. From a tall tree, stripped of all lower branches and growing in front of the cabin, floated a United States flag, a most welcome sign in that wilderness.

But what attracted the attention of the boys, no less than that of Mr. Campbell, was not so much the camp, the flag (glorious as that emblem was) or the mule, but the sight of two men sitting in dejected fashion in front of what seemed a tunnel or cave leading into the side of the mountain.

And as he caught a view of the face of one of these men Rick joyfully cried:

“Uncle Tod!”

The owner of the name, for he it was, seemed startled from a deep train of thought, his companion likewise rousing himself from a reverie that the arrival of the touring auto had not broken for either. Then Uncle Tod cried:

“Rick and Ruddy! Shiver my grub stake, it’s Rick and Ruddy!”

“How are you, Uncle Tod?” cried the lad as he leaped from the auto, while Ruddy, who followed, frisked about his master’s relative and also made quick friends with the other man. “How are you?”

“Oh, so-so to middling,” answered Mr. Belmont as he put his arm around Rick’s shoulder. “And you brought Chot along, too! That’s fine.” He looked questioningly toward Mr. Campbell, and Rick made the introduction.

“This is my partner, Sam Rockford,” said Uncle Tod, indicating rather a gloomy-appearing individual who shuffled from his seat in front of the log cabin. “Well, Rick, you and Ruddy got here at last. Have any trouble?”

“Oh, not much,” said Mr. Campbell.

“But why did you send for me in such a queer way?” asked Rick, “and why did you go off in such a hurry? What’s it all about?”

“I’ll tell you when I get around to it,” was the answer. “It’s a queer story, but maybe we can get to the bottom of it now. Just at present, though, we’re up a stump, so to speak. Stuck—at the end of the trail—badgered—up against it—anything you like to call it—eh, Sam?” and he looked at his partner.

“You said it,” came in gloomy tones from the other. “Might as well call it a day’s work and quit, I guess. I don’t want any more of scouting around in that hole,” and he nodded toward the black opening that seemed to lead into a mountain cavern.

“What’s it all about?” asked Rick in wonderment, while Ruddy nosed here and there, trying to make himself at home.

“Lost River—that’s what it’s about,” answered Uncle Tod. “Lost River, and until we find it we’re in bad shape.”

“What do you mean—a lost river?” asked Rick. “Who lost it and where was it lost?”

“Ought to be easy to find a lost river,” remarked Chot.

“Not so easy as it seems,” said gloomy Sam Rockford, and the boys were to learn that he was always this way—the least upsetting of his plans, or those of his friends, made him utter the most dire predictions. And he was always ready to quit at the least sign of opposition. Though when matters went right he was the most jolly of companions. “We’ll never see it again,” he added, desperately.

“But what’s it all about?” persisted Rick. “Where is the lost river?”

“It was there,” and Uncle Tod pointed to the mouth of the cavern. “Where it is now nobody knows—I wish we did, for without it our mine isn’t worth a pinch of snuff. I don’t know, Rick—maybe I’m crazy as some say I am, but I had an idea if I sent for you and Ruddy we could find Lost River. That’s why I telegraphed you to come—to help me find Lost River. It’s in there—somewhere,” and again he pointed to the cavern, “but where, Sam and I can’t discover. Maybe, with the help of Ruddy—”

“Hark!” suddenly interrupted Sam in less gloomy tones than before. “Hark! I think I hear something!”

CHAPTER XIII
THE DRY MINE

Sam Rockford turned his head to bring one ear—evidently his best—to bear on the black, tunnel-like opening in the side of the mountain. His listening attitude was imitated by the others.

There were a few moments of tense silence, even Ruddy standing at “attention” in response to a lifted finger on the part of Rick. Then Uncle Tod remarked:

“I don’t hear anything but the wind.”

“Reckon that’s all it was,” said Sam, gloomily. “I thought, for a minute, I heard the water coming back through the tunnel,” he went on.

“Is that what’s the trouble?” asked Mr. Campbell, with a more ready understanding of western matters than that possessed by Rick or Chot.

“That’s it—yes, sir,” answered Uncle Tod, and this time his voice was almost as gloomy as that of Sam Rockford’s. “We’re up against a dry mine, and the ore is of such a nature that water is the only thing that will make it pay. A dry mine—that’s what we’re up against.”

“But why did you tackle a dry mine?” asked Mr. Campbell.

“’Twa’n’t dry when we tackled it,” sadly observed Sam. “It was as good a prospect as heart could wish when I spent my money and yours in it, wa’n’t it Uncle Tod?” he appealed.

“It sure was, Sam,” agreed the other.

“And then, all of a sudden, the water petered out,” went on Mr. Rockford, gloomily shaking his head. “I sent word to Jake Teeter to give you the message,” he added.

“Yes, and Jake did—in his usual mysterious way,” said Uncle Tod.

“Oh, was that the message wrapped in a cabbage leaf?” asked Rick, eagerly. “We’ve been wondering about that.”

“Yes,” said Uncle Tod. “There wasn’t any need of letting me know in that crazy, old-time Indian fashion, but Jake Teeter always was that way—he never comes right out and says anything straight. If he wanted to let you know he’d been to the post office and got a letter for you, and you happened to be in with a crowd of others, what do you reckon Jake’d do?” asked Uncle Tod.

“I haven’t the least idea,” answered Mr. Campbell, for the question seemed to be directed at him.

“Well,” went on Uncle Tod, “Jake, instead of coming right out and handing you the letter, openly, would attract your attention, somehow, by making signs. Then, when he got you out of the crowd, he’d slip you the missive as if it was something contraband.”

“Why?” asked Mr. Campbell with a chuckle.

“Oh, it’s just his mysterious way of doing things. He lives on the sign language—picked it up from the Indians—he camped among ’em a good many years,” explained Uncle Tod. “Why, you’d hardly believe it, but Jake, instead of telling you grub was ready, would sneak up to you, and cautiously show you a knife and fork sticking in an inside pocket, somewhat like he’d taken it off a hotel table without the waitress seeing him. Oh, Jake’s the limit when it comes to sending mysterious messages.”

“And did he send you the stone and the bullet in the cabbage leaf—the bullet with the word ‘come’ on it?” Rick wanted to know.

“He did,” answered Uncle Tod. “So you puzzled out the ‘come’; did you? Not easy unless you happen to hit on it, but I happen to know Jake’s queer ways. He could just as well have rung the bell and told me that Sam wanted me to hurry out here.”

“What was the stone?” asked Rick.

“Piece of ore from this mine,” answered his uncle.

“Gold?” asked Mr. Campbell quickly.

“Copper,” was the reply, “though we hope to strike the yellow boys later on.”

“Won’t now—not with the river gone back on us,” declared Gloomy Sam, as the boys nicknamed him.

“Maybe we can get Lost River to flow again,” said Uncle Tod more cheerfully. “That’s why I sent for you, Rick. You helped me a lot in my salt mining,” he added, “and I believe you’re sort of lucky to have around a digging.”

“I think you’re right, Mr. Belmont,” observed Mr. Campbell. “Rick and Chot found my lost car,” and, briefly, he explained about the bank robbers.

“There! What’d I tell you?” cried Uncle Tod to his partner. “I said Rick was like a lucky penny to have around.”

“Um,” was all the reply Mr. Rockford made.

“But, Uncle Tod,” resumed Rick, “you went off pretty mysteriously yourself. Why was that?”

“I had good reasons,” came the answer. “There’s something queer about this mine, and there is a certain crowd of men trying either to get it away from us or make us give up the fight here and quit. As I didn’t want them to know of my movements I just sneaked off here quietly to join Sam, who told his friend Jake Teeter to summon me. It was Jake who stuck in the mysterious business when he didn’t need to. Though perhaps I might have left word with your mother that I was going, Rick. But I was in a hurry, and all worked up by Jake’s bullet summons, and lots of things slipped my mind.

“You see,” went on Uncle Tod, “after I bought this mine, and laid claim to it, taking in Sam Rockford as a partner, there were rumors that we’d be dished out of it. There were threats of claim-jumpers and things like that, and some talk about taking away our water rights.

“But as nothing like this happened we began to think it wouldn’t, and so I thought I could leave things in Sam’s hands and go east. I left word with him, however, to send me word if any rascals out here tried any of their tricks, though I hardly believed they would. It seems they have, but I didn’t reckon Sam would send me word in any such theatrical way as Jake managed it.

“I reckon Jake was going that way anyhow and he offered to let me know. Sam was glad of this chance, for Sam isn’t much on writing letters and he’s worse on sending telegrams. So he left it to Jake and Jake just naturally couldn’t resist trying some of his old Indian sign tricks. I’m sorry if it worried you.”

“Crickets! I thought it was nifty!” cried Rick.

“So did I!” agreed Chot.

“Well,” went on Uncle Tod, “I’m glad you looked at it that way. I only hope I didn’t make Schotzie nervous,” he remarked, giving Rick’s mother a pet nickname he had devised for her in some odd fashion. “You see I was sort of looking for some word from Sam, and when you boys burst in on me, when I was asleep in the yard that day, I thought maybe you had the message.”

“That’s when you said: ‘Has it come?’” remarked Rick.

“That was it,” said Uncle Tod, and he resumed:

“Once I got here and found how matters lay I decided to send for you. One reason was I wanted to give you a good vacation, and let you have a taste of the west, since you always said you wanted to come out here.”

“I did,” confessed Rick, “and you can’t know how thankful I am to you for letting me come.”

“So’m I,” chimed in Chot.

“Well, I just wanted you to come, and I wanted Ruddy, too,” went on Uncle Tod. “Maybe you can help us.”

“Nobody can!” declared Mr. Rockford, depressingly.

“Oh, dry up!” chided Uncle Tod with a laugh that took the sting out of the words.

“Um! That’s what Lost River did—dried up,” grunted Sam.

“Well, I guess most of the mysterious business is explained,” said Mr. Campbell, referring to the cabbage leaf message.

“Yes,” assented Uncle Tod, “I reckon you did puzzle over it for a spell, but it wasn’t my intentions, or my doings, even though I did sneak off quietly and, in that way, I may have added to it.”

“You did,” declared Rick. “And mother will be glad when she hears it’s all right. Mazie was afraid it was the Black Hand, or something like that after you, Uncle Tod.”

“No, nothing like that!” chuckled the old sailor. “But shucks! Here I go on talking and you folks probably want grub,” he exclaimed. “My manners must have gone prospecting with Lost River. Come on in, Mr. Campbell,” he invited, waving his hand toward the cabin. “We can put you up for the night, and our grub isn’t the worst in the world.”

“Oh, I’m not fussy, but are you sure you can put me up? I did count on keeping on, but it’s getting late and I don’t know this locality. I could push on—”

“No you don’t!” said Mr. Rockford with more enthusiasm than he had shown any time since the newcomers had met him. “You just bunk here. I’ll get something to eat,” and he began to bustle about with an energy and show of cheerfulness that was in strange and pleasant contrast with his former actions.

“Stay and eat hearty,” whispered Uncle Tod. “Sam loves to cook and get up a meal. He’s never happier than when he’s doing it, and it will take his mind off our troubles. Stay, Mr. Campbell. You’re in no great rush; are you?”

“No, I don’t know’s I am.”

“All right, just run your car under the shed there with my old flivver and Esmerelda—that’s the mule. I reckon there’s room for all three. Though as a matter of fact you could leave it in the open—we don’t get any rain to speak of at this season.”

“Well, I’ll just run it under the shed,” said the owner of the car, and this he did, after taking out the boys’ valises and his own overnight bag.

Meanwhile Sam Rockford was in his element, and he actually whistled as he built a fire and started to get supper, for it was now about time for that meal.

“How long since Lost River ceased flowing?” asked Mr. Campbell, as he and the boys sat with Uncle Tod in front of the cabin, while waiting for “grub.”

“It stopped a few days before Jake, in his crazy fashion, tossed the bullet and chunk of ore over your back fence, Rick,” answered the miner. “I didn’t tell your folks, Rick, but what happened was this: After my salt holdings were established I looked around for something to invest my money in, and when my former partner, Sam, told me about this claim out here he and I bought it.

“Then there was a good stream of water flowing out of the hole in the side of the mountain, and water is the one thing we need here to make mining in this locality worth while. I came out here, Sam and I established this camp and things were going fine when I left to pay your folks another visit, Rick,” said Uncle Tod. “Then, like lightning out of a clear sky, came the message from Sam and when I got here I found that Lost River had ceased running. Of course that put our mine up the flume.”

“Did it ever stop flowing before?” asked Mr. Campbell.

“Not in a good many years. In fact nobody around here ever remembers when it wasn’t running,” answered Uncle Tod. “But I ought to have suspicioned something, on account of the name—Lost River.”

“Then you didn’t give it that name?”

“Shucks, no! It’s been called that since the earliest days. I reckon, maybe, it had a habit of appearing and disappearing,” said Uncle Tod. “But we didn’t think it would act up this way with us—Sam and I didn’t. However, it has, and unless we can get some water here our mine won’t amount to anything. In fact the stuff is so fine—copper and gold—that it needs water to wash it out of the dirt. And as it is we can barely get enough water to cook with—and wash—once in a while. We have to haul it on Esmerelda’s back in casks from a creek three miles away.”

“No fun in that,” said Mr. Campbell.

“You said it!” exclaimed Uncle Tod heartily. “A dry mine, when it ought to be a wet one is the worst kind. But I’m hoping for the best.”

“No use—grub’s ready,” said Sam, gloomily, and almost in the same breath. “Might as well pull up stakes and quit,” he added.

“Not now—since Rick and Ruddy have come!” laughed Uncle Tod. “I tell you they are going to bring good luck! I’m sure of it!”

As they arose to go in the cabin and eat, a noise down the path attracted their attention, and Rick had a glimpse of a roughly-dressed man approaching. It appeared that he had tried to come up the trail unseen and unheard for as Rick and the others looked he seemed to be ready to dodge behind a tree. But his foot dislodged a bit of rock that rattled down the hill. Uncle Tod called out:

“Come on out in the open, Zeek! We see you!”

CHAPTER XIV
INTO THE CAVERN

Wondering what turn events were going to take, Rick and Chot awaited the outcome of the advent of the stranger who had been addressed by Uncle Tod as “Zeek.”

“Who is he?” whispered Rick to his uncle as the roughly-attired man, seeming rather crestfallen over his sneaking tactics, approached more openly.

“Oh, a no-account chap—Zeek Took his name is. Ought to be Zeek Take, for he’ll walk off with anything that isn’t nailed fast—unless you watch him. Looking for me, Zeek?” he asked as the unprepossessing fellow shambled forward.

“Sorter,” was the grinning answer.

“Well, here I am,” went on Uncle Tod. “What is it?”

“Er—now—did the water come?” asked Zeek, shuffling his feet like a bashful schoolboy speaking a Friday afternoon “piece.”

“No, we’re still dry, Zeek, except for what water we tote up on Esmerelda’s back. But I guess we have enough to give you a drink.”

“Oh, no, thanks, I don’t want no drink!” Zeek hastily protested, and Rick said, afterward, that he might have asked for some to wash in and not be far out of the way, as he was somewhat dirty.

“Well, Zeek, is that all you came up to ask about?” went on Uncle Tod, who seemed to enjoy the fellow’s discomfiture—and bashful and discomfited Zeek Took certainly was.

“Ya-as—that’s all, I reckon,” and Zeek’s shifty eyes darted here and there about the camp, as if spying.

“Who sent you?” suddenly asked Uncle Tod.

“Eh?”

Zeek clearly was taken by surprise.

“Who sent you?” repeated Mr. Belmont.

“Why—er—now—nobody sent me! I come myself.”

“Oh, you did? What for?”

“Wa’al,” he slowly drawled as if seeking an excuse, “I—er—now—I thought maybe if th’ river wa’n’t runnin’ you’d hire me t’ cart water so’s you could wash out th’ dirt.”

“Oh, you wanted to cart water so we could do our mining, Zeek? Well, that was very kind of you,” went on Uncle Tod, “but what little washing my partner did before the river became lost, didn’t pan out enough metal to make it pay, and I don’t believe we could afford to give you any wages.”

“Oh, I’d be willin’ t’ work for my grub, Uncle Tod.” Everyone in that region seemed to have adopted this friendly name.

Mr. Belmont shook his head and smiled in a somewhat sarcastic manner.

“I reckon not, Zeek,” he answered. “We’ve got some new prospectors now,” Uncle Tod went on. “There’s one,” and he indicated Ruddy. “It’ll be about all we can feed in a dry camp. But if you’re hungry now, I reckon we can hand you out a snack.”

“Wa’al,” drawled Zeek, “it’s been a good while since breakfast!”

“Hum!” mused Uncle Tod. “Well, sit over there, Zeek,” indicating a bench, “and Sam’ll bring you out some grub.”

Then as Rick, Chot and Mr. Campbell entered the cabin, Uncle Tod said, in a low voice:

“Zeek isn’t just the kind you want to sit down to the table with—even out in this free and easy place. He goes at his food as if it might come to life and get away from him. He’ll be more at home out there.”

Uncle Tod’s camp cabin was a more comfortable place than at first appeared. The food was excellent, though not of the finest sort, but it was well cooked, and whatever else Sam Rockford might be—gloomy and inclined to look on the dark side of everything—he certainly knew how to serve a meal. The boys and Mr. Campbell testified to this, and Ruddy would have said the same had he been able to speak.

Zeek was fed out in the open, and soon departed, murmuring his thanks. And then, as the others finished their meal, and pushed back their rough stools that served for chairs, Mr. Campbell asked:

“Anything special about Took coming here, Mr. Belmont?”

“I don’t know whether there was or not,” was Uncle Tod’s answer. “First I thought he was only one more of the queer characters to be met with out west. Then, when he began coming around more frequently—but always sneaking his way in—I became a bit suspicious.”

“Is he altogether right in his mind?” asked Mr. Campbell.

“I don’t believe he is, and that’s why I think he’s being used by some one with more brains than he has.”

“Some one trying to get your mine away from you, Uncle Tod?” asked Rick.

“Well, I don’t know’s any one is trying to do that,” was the answer. “Still you never know when you’re playing safe in this mining game. The best way, I find, is to suspect everybody until you find out they’re square, and then it isn’t always safe. As for Zeek Took, I don’t want him hanging around; that’s all, though I don’t want to be mean to him, especially if he’s hungry. How he lives I don’t know, but I won’t see even a dog go hungry. Will I, Ruddy?” and Rick’s setter looked up into the miner’s face and gratefully wagged the plumed tail.

“I don’t know much about mining,” said Mr. Campbell, as he and the other two men were smoking their pipes, while Rick and Chot listened to the talk, “but how were things here before you lost the river, or the river lost itself? And I’d like to know a little about the stream, also.”

“Well, there isn’t a great deal to tell,” said Uncle Tod reflectively. “Sam, here, bought this claim first and then let me in on it. It looked good to him—in fact it looked good to me—that was when the river was running out of the cave. We call it a river though it isn’t much more than a half-grown brook back in your country, Mr. Campbell where you have lots of water. But, such as it was, it served to wash out the dirt we dug.

“You know there are many ways to mine for gold, silver and copper,” he went on, for the especial benefit of the boys. “In some parts of the mountains you dig out the ore dry, and you may get fairly big chunks of gold. Or the ore may be filled with little specks of metal that can be got at only when the rock is crushed. This crushed rock and dust is treated in different ways. It may be smelted or mixed with water and acids or other chemicals. I don’t know much about those methods.

“Then there is a simpler form of mining, the water method. You get a lot of dirt, gravel or what-not, and in it will be a lot of fine gold dust—maybe silver dust or copper—or whatever you’re after. We get both gold and copper here—or, rather, we did.

“The simplest method of getting gold out of the dirt it’s mixed with is to ‘pan’ it. That is, take half a panful of the gold-bearing gravel and put water in the pan. By moving the pan with a circular motion you can wash away, over one edge that you tilt down, most of the water and gravel and dirt. The gold, being heavier than the dirt, goes to the bottom of the pan and lodges there. You may get a couple of dollar’s worth from each pan of dirt you wash, or you may get a cent’s worth—it depends on the dirt.”

“It’s a sort of chance,” suggested Chot.

“That’s it—just a chance,” agreed Uncle Tod. “If you want to work the washing-out method on a larger scale, you build a flume box, or a rocker. Both work on the same principle. A flume box is a long, narrow box of boards with cross cleats all along the bottom. You wash the sand and gravel down this flume with water and the gold, being heaviest, goes to the bottom and lodges against the cross cleats where you take it out later on—after a day of washing.

“A rocker is a flume box on a small scale, only instead of the water rushing down an incline you shake, or rock a box with cross pieces in it, tilting it on a slant while you do it, and the gold—if there is any—lodges on cross cleats also. A rocker box is like a pan, only better.”

“Is that what you mean when you say ‘pan out’?” asked Rick.

“That’s it,” assented Uncle Tod. “Some dirt doesn’t pan out worth a cent after all your work. Well, here, we used the flume method,” he resumed, “that is we did while Sam had water. But all of a sudden Lost River proved true to its name and we had to stop work. The gold, what there is—and the copper—is so fine that we can’t get it out without a deal of washing. As a matter of fact I don’t believe it’s over going to pay to go after copper this way—not at the price copper brings now—since the war is over. But we might make gold mining pay if we could get water.”

“Where’s the water of Lost River gone?” asked Mr. Campbell.

“That’s what we’d like to know,” said Uncle Tod with a smile. “Where is it?”

“Have you looked in the cave to find out whether it hasn’t dropped through a hole in the bottom, and is flowing along somewhere beyond you—farther down the valley?” asked Mr. Campbell.

“We tried it—yes,” assented Uncle Tod. “But it isn’t altogether healthy—going in that cave,” remarked Sam, with a look over his shoulder. “I won’t go in again. If I did I wouldn’t come out alive!”

“What’s there?” cried Rick and Chot eagerly.

“That’s what we don’t know,” answered Uncle Tod. “Maybe you can find out—now you’re here—you and Ruddy.”

“But you must have some idea of it,” insisted Mr. Campbell. “What is in the cave?”

“Ghosts!” came the unexpected answer of Sam Rockford. “Ghosts!”

“Nonsense!” declared Uncle Tod with a laugh. “I admit we did hear some spooky noises in there, when Sam and I tried to explore after the water stopped, but it wasn’t them I feared.”

“What was it?” asked Rick.

“The danger of getting lost and toppling down some hole into unknown blackness, Rick. It’s awful dark in there. I guess it must be a tunnel right under the mountain where the river used to come out. Maybe now it’s dipped into some hole or new channel. Anyhow it’s Lost River in earnest.”

“This country was once torn by volcanic action,” was the opinion of Mr. Campbell as he looked around on the rugged peaks and the low valleys. “There may be all sorts of underground and lost water courses here, and your river was probably one of them.”

“Very likely,” agreed Uncle Tod. “Well, I only wish it would find itself again. Without it we can’t do any mining.”

“I’d like to stay and help you,” said Mr. Campbell, “but I must get on to San Francisco.”

“Oh, yes,” agreed Uncle Tod. “It was very good of you to bring Rick and his chum—not forgetting Ruddy. Perhaps among us all now, we’ll be able to solve the mystery.”

Mr. Campbell departed in his auto next morning, after an uneventful night, though Rick and Chot rather looked for some excitement—perhaps a return visit of Zeek Took after dark. But nothing like that happened.

“Well, boys, what do you say to some explorations to-day?” asked Uncle Tod, when breakfast was a thing of the past.

“Explorations in the cave of Lost River?” asked Rick.

“That’s where I mean. Are you game for it?”

“Sure!” answered both boys, and Rick added: “Aren’t we, Ruddy?”

The dog leaped about, barking joyfully, for he liked action of any sort.

“You going in that spooky place again?” asked Sam, as Uncle Tod made preparations for entering the cavern.

“Of course. Don’t you want to come? We’ve got to find water somehow, Sam.”

“Not me!” he exclaimed emphatically. “When I want ghosts I like ’em in the open. And as far as getting back Lost River goes—it’ll never happen.”

“Hum,” mused Uncle Tod, “gloomy as ever! If I didn’t know you better, Sam, I’d think you meant that.”

“I do!”

“No you don’t! Come on, boys. Let’s see what we can find.”

Equipped with lanterns and a long rope the three—no, four, for Ruddy went along—entered the mouth of the gloomy cavern.

What would they find?

CHAPTER XV
UNCLE TOD GIVES UP

Rick and Chot, to say nothing of Ruddy, were in their element—just where they most delighted to be—engaged in something venturesome and penetrating into the unknown. For the tunnel or cavern, through which Lost River had formerly flowed, was certainly unknown to the boys.

“And I don’t know much more about it than you do,” confessed Uncle Tod. “I wouldn’t risk taking you lads in, under those circumstances, except that we have Ruddy with us. I depend a good deal on your dog, Rick.”

“You mean to drive away any mountain lions if any come at us?” asked Chot as they slowly made their way farther into the dark cavern.

“Shucks! I don’t believe there are any mountains lions around here!” scoffed the miner. “Nothing worse than skunks, and they’ll give us plenty of warning. No, it isn’t animals I’m afraid of.”

“What then?” asked Rick, curiously.

“Well, I don’t exactly know. There’s some sort of danger in here, but what it is nobody seems able to tell. Sam says it’s ghosts, but shucks! I never saw a ghost yet that was worth a mess of beans! But, for all that, other miners around here say they wouldn’t venture into this tunnel.”

“Maybe they’re afraid of the water suddenly coming back,” suggested Chot.

“Well, there may be something in that,” agreed Uncle Tod. “But if Lost River starts to come back we can hear it and get out of the way. Besides, the river never covered more than a small part of the bottom of the tunnel—that is when it was running at its best. There was room to walk on either side of it, and it wasn’t deep in the middle. So even if the water should come back it wouldn’t harm us.”

“Unless,” said Rick, “we happened to be in a narrow part of the tunnel where the river filled it completely.”

“Well, yes,” admitted Uncle Tod, “in that case it might be dangerous. But we won’t enter any narrow part unless we see it’s safe. No, it isn’t the water I’m worried about. It’s some unknown sort of danger that Sam fears, and that other miners around here fear.”

“Have other miners spoken of it?” asked Chot.

“Yes, several of ’em since the water stopped. When my mine went dry, and there wasn’t any more chance of working it, I said I was going in this tunnel and see what the trouble was. I was advised against it by several. They said there was a story that, years ago, the water stopped running. Some Indians went in to see why and—well, they never came out again.” Uncle Tod shook his head dubiously.

“Did the water start flowing once more?” Rick wanted to know.

“Yes, it must have, for it’s been running for years. No one around here has ever seen it dry—it’s just a rumor that it was.”

“I don’t see what there is to be afraid of,” remarked Chot. “If it isn’t animals, and the water itself doesn’t nearly fill the tunnel, what can it be?”

“I wish I knew,” sighed Uncle Tod. “It’s like looking for something you don’t know about and in the dark at that—for these lanterns don’t give much light. But, as I said, I wouldn’t have brought you boys out here except I believed you might happen to think of some things Sam and I couldn’t. You boys are smart, and so is Ruddy. I trust a dog where I wouldn’t a man, in sensing danger.”

“That’s right!” cried Chot. “’Member the broken bridge, Rick?”

“I should say I did,” and when they repeated this story in detail to Uncle Tod—for they had barely mentioned it before—the old miner exclaimed:

“There! What’d I tell you? Ruddy is what we got to depend on. He’ll give us warning of danger, and I might as well say that what I fear worst is getting lost in here or tumbling down some deep hole. So mind your steps, boys! We have ropes to help us in case we take a tumble, but watch out just the same.”

Thus warned the boys stepped cautiously enough, and Ruddy, too, seemed filled with a wholesome respect for the place, as he did not rush about blindly, nosing here and there as he did out in the open. He kept close to his friends, going only a little way ahead, and not out of range of the glimmer of the lanterns. And then, looking back, he would wait for the party to come up to him.

“Ruddy knows his business,” said Uncle Tod. “I thought of him first shot when I saw what had occurred here, and that’s why I wanted you to bring him, Rick. Two boys and a dog are equal to any mystery that ever happened.”

They were now fairly within the long, winding cavern or tunnel that led under the mountain and served as a course for Lost River when that stream condescended to be found. Just now no one knew where the river had hidden itself, though it was reasonable to suppose that it followed the general law of water and ran down hill. In that case it must either be flowing under the feet of the explorers, perhaps a mile or more below them, or it was off to their left or right, more or less underground.

There are underground rivers in many parts of the world, and they are always more or less of a mystery. I, myself, have explored some of them, and have been puzzled, as nearly everyone has, over the strange behavior of the streams. They appear on top of the earth, and then suddenly dip down into a gorge that they have worn away, often through solid rock. Then they disappear beneath the surface of the earth, to appear miles farther on, having gone through passages never seen by mortal eyes.

Often it cannot be said whether the reappearing river is the same one you start to trace, or another that has taken its place underground. It is all guess work, and as such is very fascinating.

So you can easily see that Rick and Chot were delighted with this opportunity of being with Uncle Tod, and the danger of it did not at all worry or impress them.

“We’ll find Lost River!” declared Rick.

“Sure we will!” agreed Chot.

Ruddy, of course, said nothing, but from the manner in which he nosed about it might be assumed that he would do his share of the exploration work and warn of any danger he sensed.

Flashing their lights to and fro—for each carried a lantern—the travelers in the tunnel looked about them. Under the suggestion of Uncle Tod the boys were searching for some side passage, or downward dip into which Lost River might have slipped, thus keeping away from the mine where its waters were much needed.

Suddenly, as Chot stepped a little ahead of his two friends, and off to the right, the boy gave a cry of astonishment, mingled with fear and then came the thud of a fall.

“Chot’s gone!” exclaimed Uncle Tod, hurrying to the place where the lad was last seen.

Ruddy uttered a bark of warning it seemed as he dashed up along side of the miner, and only just in time, for Uncle Tod stopped short on the edge of a deep and black hole. Rick, at his uncle’s side, gave a gasp of fear and swung his lantern over the chasm.

“Are you there, Chot?” he cried desperately.

To the great relief of the two, back came the boy’s voice in answer:

“Sure I’m here! It wasn’t much of a tumble, but my lantern went out. Didn’t break, though, I guess.”

“Are you hurt?” asked Uncle Tod.

“Nope!” cheerfully answered Chot. “There’s a lot of old leaves and stuff down here and I fell on that. If you lower the rope I can get up all right.”

“It’s good we brought the rope,” said Rick, as his uncle uncoiled it.

“Yes, I figured on something like this,” said the miner.

It was not difficult to pull Chot up, for the hole into which he had fallen was not deep. The lad was bruised and shaken up, but not otherwise harmed.

“We have got to be more careful,” declared Uncle Tod.

But, with all their care the same accident happened again, a little farther on, only it was Rick who fell in. And he fell harder and deeper than Chot, with the result that he received a badly bruised left arm which gave him great pain.

“Want to go back?” asked Uncle Tod.

“No, sir!” exclaimed Rick, gritting his teeth to keep back a groan of anguish.

So they went on. But when Uncle Tod himself slipped over a small ledge, turning on his ankle with force enough to make him limp, and when Chot just saved himself from plunging into another hole, Uncle Tod said:

“I’m through! I’m going to give up!”

“What?” cried Rick. “Why, we haven’t explored half the tunnel yet!”

“Yes we have,” was the answer. “There’s the end now! It is shorter than I thought, and there isn’t a sign of water. I’m through I tell you. Might as well give up the mine.”

“What do you mean—the end of the tunnel?” asked Rick.

In answer his uncle pointed to the right and the boys could see daylight glimmering where, before, only invisible blackness had been ahead of them.

What did it mean?

CHAPTER XVI
RICK DRAWS SOMETHING

“Yes, boys,” went on Uncle Tod, “it looks as though we had played the game out. There’s the end of the tunnel—it’s much shorter than I ever thought, for Sam and I never came this far before—and we haven’t seen a drop of water the whole length.”

They had walked to where daylight gleamed and found that they could pass out of the tunnel into the open. They emerged at the side of a hill, very much the same sort of hill that was behind the cabin at the mine camp. Below them lay the valley, winding off to the east and west—a deserted desolate valley, dotted here and there, perhaps, with the camps of hopeful miners, but which camps were too small to be seen amid the trees and bushes.

“The river was here once,” said Uncle Tod, “but it’s gone now.”

“How can you tell it was here?” asked Chot.

“By the way the stones are worn,” was the answer. “See how smooth and rounded they are, where water has been flowing over them for years and years. But there is no water now, worse luck!”

The boys easily recognized the dry bed of some former stream—Lost River beyond all doubt. But where was Lost River now? That is what they wanted to know.

As Uncle Tod had said, the tunnel was much shorter than he had supposed. They had come not more than three miles under the mountain—a long enough passage if it had been dug by the hand of man for a railroad, as it was all through solid rock—but the rushing water which had, seemingly, bored the passage, took no note of time. It had centuries at its disposal, and had worn its way slowly.

Entering the tunnel at the camp, the explorers had wound their way through it, with the comparatively unimportant accidents I have described, and had emerged through a hole in the side of the mountain. All about them were water-worn stones, and they could trace where the stream had flowed downward from where they stood, but in the opposite direction from that in which they had been traveling. In other words they had walked against the direction of the stream.

“And that’s the queer part of it,” said Uncle Tod. “All along, boys, we’ve been going up grade through the tunnel, and that means the water of Lost River flowed down, just as it did before my mine went dry. Now we get here and at this point the course of the stream shows that the water must have flowed the other way, in the same direction we have been going.”

“You mean this hole here, where we just came out, is a sort of diving place,” suggested Rick.

“That’s it—a miniature watershed. Back of us, in the tunnel where we just came from, the water flowed east. Here it began and flowed west—that is when there was any water.

“So I can’t see,” went on Uncle Tod, “any use in keeping on. Lost River was here, but it’s gone. When it will come back—no one knows. Not much use waiting for it, I reckon. I don’t see why Sam and I didn’t find this out before, but he got frightened by a lot of queer noises in the tunnel, and wouldn’t keep on. I didn’t dare risk going alone, and we never got as far as here.

“But this is the end—I’m going to give up now!”

“It’s too bad,” said Rick, nursing his bruised arm tenderly. “I thought we’d find something. What are you going to do now, Uncle Tod?”

“Oh, give up and go back east, I reckon. I’ve got other mines in different parts of the country, but I wanted this to pan out well for Sam’s sake. It’s the only one he has an interest in. But it wasn’t to be, I guess. I’m sorry I brought you boys out on such a wild-goose chase!”

“Oh, we don’t mind,” Rick hastened to say.

“I guess not!” cried Chot. “We’ve had packs of fun!”

“And we’ll have more,” suggested Rick. “We don’t have to go back right away; do we?”

“No, I reckon not,” his uncle said. “Might as well stay and have a little vacation while you’re here. And maybe Sam and I will prospect around a bit. Might happen to hit on some nuggets or pockets that would pay us for our grub, anyhow. We’ll stay a while. But now I’m going to head back for camp.”

“Through the tunnel?” asked Rick.

“No, we can go back along this side valley trail. Looks like a fairly good one though I haven’t traveled it myself. Well, it’s too bad, but I’ve got to give up!”

With a sigh, Uncle Tod led the way from this second opening of the mysterious tunnel, back toward his camp. And as Rick followed him there came into the lad’s mind an idea that, eventually, was responsible for the solution of the mystery of Lost River; all of which will be related in due time.

It was nearly night when the travelers, foot-sore and weary, with aching bones, reached the mine camp. Ruddy, panting and tired, stretched out in his accustomed place and promptly went to sleep.

“Well?” asked Sam Rockford inquiringly. “What did you find?”

“Nothing,” answered Uncle Tod.

“I thought you would,” was the gloomy one’s comment. “Well, what you goin’ to do now, Tod?”

“Nothing, I reckon. I’ll let the boys have a good time, and then I’ll go back east with ’em. This mine isn’t worth the powder to blow it up—without water to wash out the pay stuff.”

“I reckon not,” assented Sam. “But what did you hear in the tunnel, Tod; any strange ghost voices?”

“Nonsense! Of course not! But we came to the farther end which you and I never reached. The tunnel just peters out at a place where Lost River, apparently, ran both ways. But just now it isn’t running either way. It’s gone!”

“Doesn’t take a weather prophet to see that,” grunted Sam. “Well, you’ve got a few other claims around here. Might as well work them while the boys are having a vacation.”

“I reckon so,” agreed Uncle Tod, and his voice was almost as gloomy as that which Sam so often used.

As for Rick and Chot they were too tired then to think much about it—all they wanted was “grub,” and Sam prepared an unusually good supper. As least so it tasted to Rick, Chot and Ruddy.

Rick started drawing with pencil and paper.

It was two or three days after the disappointing exploration of the tunnel, during which time the boys, their sore spots healed, romped with Ruddy about the surrounding country, meeting miners and other characters who told strange tales of Lost River. Some of the more ignorant held that the stream, and the tunnel through which it formerly flowed, were enchanted, or under the spell of some evil spirit. But of course Rick and Chot laughed at this.

The two boys and their dog (for Chot claimed a loving interest in Ruddy) paid several more visits to the second opening of the tunnel—the place where Uncle Tod had been so disappointed—and it was after one of these visits, sitting by themselves in the mine cabin as they were (for Uncle Tod and Sam had gone out) it was at this time that Rick started drawing something with pencil and paper.

“What you doing?” asked Chot. “Going to write a story of Lost River?”

“Not much, though after we find it maybe I will,” Rick answered with a laugh.

“What do you mean—do you think you’re going to find it?”

“I might,” was the cool answer. “Look here, Chot, what do you think of that?” and Rick passed to his chum a sketch, or drawing, on which certain words were written. Chot studied for a few moments, and then his eyes brightened as he cried:

“Golly! Maybe that’s the way it really happened, Rick!”

“It’s worth trying, anyhow; don’t you think?”

“I sure do! Cracky! I didn’t know you were such a sketch artist. This is a regular pirate’s treasure map.”

“It may turn out that way,” chuckled Rick. “I’ve been thinking about this ever since Uncle Tod gave up, and it came into my head that this may solve the mystery.”

CHAPTER XVII
ON THEIR OWN

Chot remained silent for several seconds, looking at the rough plan which Rick had sketched out. He turned it first to one side and then the other, even looking at it upside down.

“Why don’t you stand on your head?” asked Rick with a chuckling laugh. He was happy because Chot appeared to agree with his theory, or idea, which seemed wild enough at first.

“I’m trying to look at it in all sort of ways before we tackle it,” Chot said.

“Will you try it with me?” eagerly asked Rick.

“I sure will!” came the quick answer. “But aren’t you going to let your Uncle Tod in on it?”

Rick slowly shook his head.

“Not just yet,” he answered. “I want to go back to the second tunnel before I say anything, and look around, now that I have drawn out this plan. I just wanted to see what you thought of it.”

“All right,” agreed Chot. “Maybe it will be best to say nothing until we’re a little more sure. But it looks all right to me,” he added as again he glanced at the drawing before handing it back to Rick. “How did you come to think of it?” he asked.

“Well, I got thinking how queer it was that all those rocks should be piled up there to the left of the place where we came out of the other end of the tunnel,” answered Rick. “It didn’t seem right they should be there naturally, and when I looked at them yesterday I saw they had been blasted out.”

“Blasted out?” cried Chot in amazement.

“Yes, some explosive has been used there,” declared Rick, positively.

“Then somebody must have done it!” exclaimed his chum.

“Sure they did.”

“On purpose?”

“Why else?”

“You mean they blasted away a rocky wall and made Lost River lose itself again, Rick?”

“Something like that, yes. But I can’t tell any more about it until we go take a look. We’ll go there with this map—maybe I haven’t got it just right, ’cause I made it from memory. But we’ll go take another look, and I can fix any mistakes I made. Then, if it seems to be like what I think, we’ll tackle it ourselves.”

“On our own, you mean?” asked Chot.

“Sure! Why not? If we tell Uncle Tod he may only laugh and say we can’t do it.”

“And if we tell Sam he’ll only look over his shoulder and say a ghost will get us,” chuckled Chot. “Yes, I guess we’d better go on our own. But we’ll take Ruddy, of course?” he questioned.

“Oh, sure!” exclaimed Rick.

The two boys bent over the drawing Rick had made. It appeared as shown on next page.

“Can you understand it?” asked Rick.

“Sure—most of it,” answered Chot. “Here’s our camp, and the flume where they used to wash out the pay dirt when they had water.”

“Lost River came from the tunnel, as I have drawn it,” went on Rick, “and the dotted lines show where it used to run in the tunnel. I’ve left off the top of the tunnel so you could see what I mean.”

RICK DALTON’S MAP

“I see,” said Chot.

“Then,” continued Rick, pointing with his pencil, “we come to the opening of the second tunnel—I don’t exactly mean a second tunnel—”

“You mean the second opening of the tunnel, ’cause there’s only one tunnel,” suggested Chot.

“That’s it—yes,” assented Rick. “And at this second opening is where there was a division—the water seemed to flow down into Green Valley.”

“I see,” said Chot.

“And here,” went on Rick, “where I’ve marked it, is a pile of rocks. Now I claim these rocks were blasted out of the side of the hill and piled there, either by the blast or afterward. And, what’s more, Chot, I think those rocks hide another opening into the tunnel. You know, it branches off and goes under the hill again.”

“Like the letter Y?” asked Chot.

“That’s it. And I think Lost River came out of the left hand branch of the Y and flowed down inside our tunnel to a point near our camp. Then it came out into the open where Uncle Tod and Sam used it for the flume. Also, at the Y, some of the water flowed down into the valley at the place Uncle Tod calls a watershed, but not as much as went into our tunnel.”

“I see,” said Chot. “But what more is there to it?”

“That’s what we’ve got to find out,” said Rick. “If I’m right we may find Lost River somewhere in back of that pile of stones.”

“But if it’s there, why doesn’t it run out through the stones?” asked Chot. “They’re piled up so loose they wouldn’t hold back any water like a dam would.”

“I know it,” agreed Rick. “And what I think is that the river has been turned out of its course somewhere back in the other tunnel that’s maybe behind the pile of rocks.”

“You mean Lost River is lost in another tunnel?” asked his chum.

“That’s what I think, and it’s up to you and me to find it.”

“I’m with you!” cried Chot, eagerly. “It’ll be fun to be on our own, with Ruddy to help. But maybe Uncle Tod won’t let us,” he said, dubiously.

“Oh, I guess he will,” spoke Rick hopefully. “We’ve been off by ourselves a lot lately—we could go and stay all day—take some grub with us.”

“But maybe it would take longer than a day.”

“That’s nothing. We could stay all night. We’ve been camping before, when we went on Scout hikes.”

“Sure we have, Rick.”

“All right, then if we have to stay all night we will, but we’ll try to do it in one day.”

“First we got to get those stones out of the way and see if there is another tunnel opening,” suggested Chot.

“That’s right,” assented his chum. “We’ll do that to-morrow, and then, if we find what we’re looking for, we’ll start next day.”

Uncle Tod and his partner were so busy seeking another mine location, where they would not have to depend on water, that they paid little attention to the boys or dog. Rick, Chot and Ruddy could wander off where they pleased. So it was an easy matter to proceed to the second opening of the tunnel—the place where they had come out before.

They went by the outside trail, as it was quicker, and there was nothing to be gained by again proceeding through the tunnel. And there, as they looked at the pile of rocks, it was made certain to both boys—in the light of Rick’s map—that what Rick had said might very likely be true.

Behind those stones might easily be another tunnel, and in that tunnel—well, they hoped to find Lost River, or a trace of it.

“It’s going to be a lot of work—moving all those stones,” announced Chot with a sigh as they gazed at the tumbled mass of broken and jagged rocks.

“Oh, not so much,” retorted Rick, more cheerfully. “We can move one at a time, and all we need to do is to make an opening so we can get through. If we can bring the river back, the water will soon make a channel for itself.”

“Bring Lost River back?” cried Chot. “How you going to do it?”

“That’s what we’ve got to find out,” answered his chum. “Anyhow we’re on our own, now, and maybe we’ll surprise Uncle Tod.”

Then they fell to work upon the rocks, tossing the smaller ones aside, and, with long tree branches for levers, rolling the larger boulders down the side of the mountain.

And, as they labored, they wondered what mystery lay behind the pile of rocks.

CHAPTER XVIII
INTO THE DARK

“Not very much fun—this,” commented Rick, as he and Chot tossed rock after rock aside. “Like prisoners working on a stone pile; isn’t it?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” slowly answered Chot, as he straightened up to ease his aching back. “We don’t have to do it if we don’t want to, Rick.”

“Yes, that’s so,” agreed the other lad. “Here, Ruddy, what are you trying to do?” he asked, for the setter was acting in a peculiar manner standing at attention in front of a hole that ran under the roots of a gnarled tree. Ruddy was growling in a low voice and he showed every indication of anger, not unmixed with alarm.

“Let’s go over and see what he’s got,” suggested Chot.

“I only hope it isn’t a skunk,” murmured Rick. “He fooled me that way once and—whew—I’ve never forgotten it! Oh, boy!”

“I don’t smell anything,” remarked Chot, hopefully.

“No, not yet,” assented Rick with a laugh. “And when you do smell it—then it’s too late. But I reckon it isn’t a skunk. If it was he’d have been into action long before this. Mr. Skunk doesn’t stand much monkeying. He’ll give you two fair warnings before he shoots and then, if you’re foolish enough not to mind them he unlimbers his heavy artillery. Here, Ruddy, keep back until I can see what it is under there!” ordered Rick.

The dog looked toward the boys as they left the stone pile, growled again and then obediently moved away from the hole into which he had, evidently, seen some animal retreat, or perhaps he had chased it there himself, since Rick and Chot had not paid much attention to him.

The two boys cautiously approached the hole under the roots of the old, gnarled tree which grew out of the side of the hill not far from the pile of rocks. As he drew near Rick began sniffing the air cautiously, for, as he said, he had had one experience with a skunk that Ruddy stirred up, and did not want another.

“There’s a wild animal smell, but I don’t believe it comes from a skunk,” was Rick’s opinion as he drew near the hole. “Can you reach me a stick, Chot?”

“Here,” answered his chum, passing over a long slender tree branch. Rick poked it down in the hole, turned it around and jabbed it in as far as it would go. Nothing came out, not even a sound.

“Guess it’s a false alarm,” suggested Chot.

“Maybe so. Yet Ruddy isn’t the kind of a dog to bark up the wrong tree or down the wrong hole. Maybe the stick isn’t long enough.”

The lads looked around until they found a larger pole, Ruddy, meanwhile, watching them curiously and interestedly. But though Rick and Chot took turns poking sticks down the hole, turning them this way and that, and jabbing them in, not a sound—not a growl or snarl—came out from among the twisted roots.

Ruddy stood near his two friends, made little darts forward at the hole at every motion on the part of the boys, and whimpered in eager anticipation, growling now and then and, anon, permitting himself the challenge of a bark. But it was all to no purpose.

“I guess there’s nothing here,” said Chot at last. “We’d better get back to our stone pile.”

“There has been something here,” said Rick. “I can smell that wild animal smell.”

“Like in a circus tent,” suggested Chot.

“That’s it—sure! But whatever it was has gone out I reckon.”

“Animals have back doors to their dens; don’t they?” asked Chot.

“I reckon they do—this one must have had, anyhow.”

“What do you think it was, Rick?”

“Oh, a fox, maybe.”

“Couldn’t it be a bob cat?”

“You mean a lynx?”

“Yep.”

“Sure, it could. Maybe it was. Well, we’ll let it go this time, seeing it got away!” laughed Rick. “Come on, Ruddy, chase yourself around and get up an appetite for dinner,” and he threw a stick down the side of the hill, the boys laughing at the dog’s eagerness to retrieve it.

“Do you mind doing this, Chot?” asked Rick, when they were again busy on the stone pile, tossing and prying aside the rocks.

“Not a bit—why?”

“Well, it isn’t much fun to ask you out west on a vacation and then set you to heaving rocks.”

“We aren’t doing this for work—it’s because we want to find out something,” declared Chot. “I don’t mind if you don’t.”

“No, I don’t. If we can only show Uncle Tod how to get back the water of Lost River—cracky! Wouldn’t he be surprised?”

“I’ll say he would!” ejaculated Chot.

It was no easy task the boys had set for themselves, for the stone pile was large, and many of the boulders in it were of great size. But they were Scouts and not accustomed to give up a task just because it was difficult.

The smaller stones they tossed out of their way, and the larger ones, some only after many trials, were rolled down the side of the valley after being dislodged by tree-branch levers.

Once, just before noon, Chot straightening up to ease his back, looked toward the hole under the twisted tree roots.

“There’s Ruddy at the bob cat’s den again,” he remarked.

“I’m not sure it’s a bob cat,” said Rick, “but he certainly is there,” and he looked toward where Ruddy was now trying to enlarge the hole by digging away the dirt at the lower edge. “Come here, Ruddy!” called Rick.

The dog barked, came a little way toward his master, reluctantly enough, and then returned to the hole.

“He hates to leave it,” said Chot.

“Must be something there,” agreed his chum. “We’ll set a trap there to-night.”

“Where’ll we get a trap?”

“Oh, Uncle Tod has some. I’d like to catch something.”

“So would I, if it isn’t a skunk,” said Chot.

“Well, after all, it may only be a big rat, or some animal like a groundhog,” decided Rick, “though I don’t know whether groundhogs live out here or not. All right, Ruddy,” he went on, speaking to his dog, “stay there if it’s any fun, and let us know when it comes out.”

Again the boys fell to work on the stone pile. They could see that they were making an “impression” on it, as Rick called it when they stopped to eat some of the lunch they had brought with them, sharing it with Ruddy. For there was quite a hole excavated into the pile of big and little boulders.

After their meal, which was followed by a brief resting period, the lads again began tossing aside the rocks in their endeavor to see what lay behind them. That it was the opening into a tunnel beneath the mountain they hoped. And what they feared was that the pile of stones might hide but the smooth gravel side of the sloping hill.

“But it can’t be that,” decided Rick. “These stones never got here naturally. They were piled here and there aren’t any like ’em anywhere else around here.”

“Where do you think they came from?” asked Chot.

“From inside the tunnel that we’re going to find,” was Rick’s ready answer. “The stones were blasted out of the tunnel and piled here to cover up a hole, I’m sure.”

“Maybe so,” agreed Chot.

It was about the middle of the afternoon that Chot, again straightening up, looked at his hands and asked, ruefully:

“What’s good for blisters, Rick?”

“You getting some?”

“Sure! Aren’t you?”

“A few, yes. Say, what we ought to have are leather gloves, or leather pads like those the men wear when they’re paving a street with granite blocks.”

“All right, chase down to the five and ten cent store and get a couple of pairs,” chuckled Chot as he gazed around on the deserted and desolate valley, for not a human habitation was in sight.

Rick looked at Chot a moment, as if he did not understand, or was not thinking of what his chum was saying. Then Rick cried:

“I have it—bark gloves!”

“Bark what?” asked Chot.

“Bark gloves! Look, we can peel off some bark from this tree—it’s tough and stringy. We can take a piece, cut a hole in for our thumb, and tie the bark on with string. That will save the palms of our hands.”

“That’s a good idea!” complimented Chot. “Let’s try it.”

With their knives they stripped some bark from a tree, the name of which they did not know, but which bark was sufficiently tough and pliable to form a protective covering. Tying pads of this on their hands saved them from most of the contact with the rough stones, and the boys were able to work much faster now.

They paid little attention now to Ruddy, though occasional glances showed them that the dog was still worrying away at the hole. He growled and whined, looking occasionally toward his two boy chums as if he could not understand why they did not take the same interest as did he.

But Rick and Chot had other matters to occupy their attention. They could see, now, that they were making an opening through which was, undoubtedly, a screening wall of stones. They did not have to toss aside the rocks all the way to the top, for near the summit some great boulders had fallen, or been placed, in the shape of a rude arch, supporting themselves and the stones above and on either side.

“If we get enough of these lower stones out of the way,” remarked Chot, “we can walk under the arch just like through a gateway.”

“If it doesn’t fall on us,” agreed his chum, a bit apprehensively.

But neither boy dreamed of danger. Faster and faster they worked as they saw the afternoon sun waning, and when its shadows were very long suddenly Rick pulled aside a large stone and gave a cry.

“Hurry!” he shouted. “Here it is, Chot!”

“What?” asked the other, who had gone to the water bottle for a drink.

“The tunnel! It’s here all right, and some one piled these rocks here on purpose to hide it. Now let’s see if we can find Lost River!”

Chot and Rick stood side by side, gazing into the dark opening that had been revealed to them. More rocks were quickly tossed aside. A larger opening was seen.

“Shall we go in?” asked Chot as they peered into the murky blackness.

Rick did not answer. He was looking and listening.

CHAPTER XIX
MYSTERIOUS NOISES

Through the black opening that confronted the boys came no sound. It was dark and mysterious. Even Ruddy, brave as he was, seemed to feel some mystic spell as he left, for a time, the hole beneath the gnarled tree and came to stand beside the lads. They saw him slink back and his tail droop between his legs.

“Shall we go in?” asked Chot again, rather puzzled by the silence of his chum. “Ruddy doesn’t seem to like it, but maybe he’ll follow when we go in.”

Rick shook his head.

“Not yet,” he answered. “Let’s wait until morning, and then we’ll take lanterns, ropes and things.”

“And something to eat,” added Chot. “We may be gone all day. And are you going to tell Uncle Tod?”

“Not until we find something that’s worth while telling,” was Rick’s answer. “He and Sam Rockford would only laugh at us if they came here and found out we’d chucked aside these stones just to uncover a hole in the side of the hill.”

“I think it’s more than just a hole,” declared Chot. “Don’t you think it’s part of the tunnel?”

“I’m sure it is!” asserted Rick. “You wouldn’t get that much air coming from just a hole or cave. There wouldn’t be any current. But you can feel how hard this wind pours out.”

“It sure does,” agreed Chot, and, indeed, there was a very decided current of air coming from the opening they had uncovered by moving the stones.

“That shows there’s a shaft, or tunnel, with air coming in the other end,” declared Rick. “Now the thing for us to do is to go in and—”

“Find Lost River,” interrupted Chot with a laugh.

“That’s it,” agreed his chum. “But we’ll go back to camp and start out again in the morning.”

“And aren’t you going to tell Uncle Tod?” Chot asked.

“Nope!” decided Rick. “Let’s have something worth while to tell him.”

“All right!” agreed Chot.

And so it was decided. Perhaps the boys were foolish in this, but they did not stop to consider the risks they took. Few boys do. It is not the quality of youth to think. Rush into danger, and, if possible, rush out again. That is why youth does so much—it seldom stops to count the cost.

“Come on, Ruddy!” called Rick, for the dog, after a brief inspection of the “tunnel,” as the boys called it, an inspection which did not seem to indicate that he liked it—had gone back to the hole beneath the tree.

Through the gathering darkness, but along a trail they now well knew, the boys and their dog tramped back to Uncle Tod’s camp. They went by the “outside route,” as they called it, as distinguished from the way leading through the tunnel in which Lost River once flowed to wash out the pay dirt at the mine.

“Where in the world have you lads been?” demanded Uncle Tod, as Rick, Ruddy and Chot appeared some time after supper had been served.

“Oh, prospecting,” answered Rick, vaguely enough.

Uncle Tod laughed.

“Guess he’s a chip from the old block—meaning myself,” he said to Sam. “Did you find any nuggets?” he asked.

“Not yet,” answered Rick with a look at Chot to make sure his chum would say nothing of their discovery, which, after all, might amount to nothing.

“Well, sit up and have some grub,” invited Sam. “I kept the beans warm for you.”

“Thanks,” murmured Rick.

Fortunately Uncle Tod and Sam were too much occupied, in talking about a promising prospect they had discovered that day, to pay great attention to the boys, and so the men did not closely question Rick and Chot.

The two boys did not sleep as soundly nor as easily that night as they had on other nights since coming to Lost River camp. The reason was they were thinking too much about what might lie in that dark and mysterious hole they had uncovered.

However, youth does not need very much sleep to refresh it, and what Rick and Chot obtained was enough to make them as fresh as daisies next morning. They were up, if not exactly with the lark, very shortly following that bird famed for early rising, and after breakfast Uncle Tod said:

“Boys, Sam and I are going off prospecting. It’s in a hard place, or we’d ask you to come along. I don’t like to leave you here at the camp, but—”

“Oh, we don’t mind,” Rick was quick to say. “We’ll go off by ourselves and have some fun.”

“All right,” agreed Uncle Tod, “but be careful, and take Ruddy with you. That dog knows a lot.”

“He sure does,” assented Rick.

Matters were turning out just as he and Chot hoped they would. The boys and dog could take what supplies and food they needed and spend all day exploring the mysterious tunnel.

“It couldn’t be better,” said Rick exultantly as Uncle Tod and his partner shuffled off down the trail.

“That’s right,” agreed Chot. “And if we come back and tell ’em we’ve found Lost River—”

“Oh, boy!” chanted Rick.

They took with them everything they thought they would need in making the exploration, including food for themselves and Ruddy. They also carried water bottles, for though they were on the trail of a disappeared river they might not find it.

Behold them then, a little later, penetrating into the blackness of the tunnel, flashing on the sides and roof gleams from lanterns they carried—oil lanterns, with electric flashlights in their pockets for use in emergencies.

“Do you think we might get walled up in here?” asked Chot, as he and his chum, with Ruddy, passed beneath the overhanging arch of fantastic boulders, below which they had dug the hole for themselves.

“Walled up; what do you mean?” asked Rick.

“I mean if these rocks took a notion to tumble down they’d fill the opening we made and maybe we couldn’t get out.”

“Oh, I don’t believe that will happen,” said Rick with the careless and joyous abandon of youth.

And so they went in. Ruddy hung back for a moment, as if a bit suspicious of the undertaking, but when Rick called to his dog the faithful companion of more than one exciting adventure came on with a wag of his tail as if saying:

“Well, if anything happens it’s your fault.”

The boys had not penetrated many hundred feet into what was, undoubtedly a tunnel under the hill, or mountain, before they saw unmistakable signs that water had, at no distant time, flowed there. Marks on the floor and walls showed them this, and there were, on rocky ledges several feet up from the floor, masses of dried sticks, leaves and other debris that indicated how the tunnel stream, at times, rose to higher levels. In receding, this debris was left caught in cracks and on ledges.

“But where is the river now?” asked Chot, for there was no sign of moisture. The sides and bottom of the tunnel were very dry.

“I think some one took it,” was Rick’s answer.

“But where is the river now?” asked Chot.

“You do? Took it?”

“Sure! I mean some one has changed the course of this stream. Lost River used to run through this tunnel. Now it doesn’t, and some one blasted out a lot of rocks from the end where we just came in and piled them up to hide the tunnel. I believe some one wanted the water of this river for their own mines, or maybe for farm irrigation, and they just changed the course of it.”

“How could they?”

“That’s what we’ve got to find out,” said Rick. “Come on, it may be a long way to the other end.”

The tunnel they were now in was as black, as dismal and as mysterious as the one they had walked through, starting at Uncle Tod’s camp and ending at the heap of stones. They went carefully, to avoid falling into holes or deep cracks, and swung their lanterns to and fro. Ruddy, contrary to his usual habit, did not run on ahead, to explore on his own account. He kept close to the boys as if afraid.

The tunnel wound to right and left, like some gigantic snake. It was about twenty-five feet wide on the average, sometimes more and sometimes less. In places the roof was not more than ten feet above the heads of the boys and, again, they would be unable to see it in the gleam of their most powerful flash lights.

“Must be a hundred feet up or more,” said Rick after one of these tests.

“I believe you,” Chot answered.

On and on they went, stopping now and then to listen for any sound that would indicate water. But no trickling, murmur or a louder thunder, that might mean a hidden waterfall, came to their ears.

“Where do you reckon that river is?” asked Chot, after a while.

“You’ve got me,” admitted Rick. “But it has been here, that’s sure, and we haven’t come to the end yet.”

This was true, for the tunnel still stretched its black, winding and mysterious length ahead of them. The way was not without its dangers, for, more than once, Rick found himself stepping on the very edge of a black hole.

And once Chot would have fallen into a dismal chasm but that he caught hold of a projecting spur of rock and so saved himself. However these dangers seemed to the boys no more than others they had encountered when on previous excursions afield and in the forest. They were young and active, and to them a miss was as good as a mile, or “even a mile and a half,” as Rick said.

It was nearly noon, which fact Chot ascertained by a look at his cheap but reliable watch, and he was about to propose that they stop and eat when suddenly the hitherto silence of the tunnel was broken by a strange, mysterious noise. It was like some dismal giant groaning in agony.

“What’s that?” asked Chot in a tense whisper.

“I don’t know,” answered Rick. “Listen!”

Ruddy set up a frightened howling.

CHAPTER XX
A STRANGE CAMP

Through the air, over the heads of Rick, Chot and Ruddy, now seemingly on one side and now on the other—surrounding them, as it were—the mysterious noise came and went. Now it almost died away—an expiring groan it might be from some unseen inhabitant of the tunnel. Then again, it would fairly howl around them. And at the conclusion of one of these weird howls Ruddy again joined his voice to that of the unseen one, making so nerve-racking a combination of notes as to cause cold shivers to run down the spines of the lads.

“Whew!” whistled Chot, as the sound seemed to vanish into the mysterious black recesses of the place, “this is too much for me!”

“You’re not going to quit; are you?” cried Rick, for he saw the light of Chot’s lantern drawing away.

“Why not?” demanded Chot. “This is fierce! You aren’t going to stay; are you?”

“I’m going to stay and I’m going on!” declared Rick firmly.

“Well,” went on Chot, “I’m not going to desert, but when Ruddy howls like he did—that’s enough. There’s something unhuman here, Rick.”

“It doesn’t sound very pleasant,” admitted the boy. “There it comes again!” he cried, as, once more, the mysterious noise filled the black tunnel, which the lanterns of the boys seemed to make only the darker.

Around them, above them, on all sides of the lads circulated that weird sighing, howling, groaning and yelling noise, as though hundreds of imps of blackness were calling to each other in the gloom, laughing in fiendish glee at the plight of the boys.

Ruddy once more howled dismally, ending with such a queer note of protest in his voice that, in spite of his fears, Rick laughed.

“What’s the matter, old fellow?” he asked, as he patted the dog’s head. “Can’t you stand a little groaning?”

“If we only knew what it was,” spoke Chot in rather a chattering voice. “Do you reckon that’s just the wind making echoes in here, Rick?”

“First I thought it was the wind, maybe blowing through holes in the rocks,” said Rick. “I remember reading in the book ‘Tom Brown’s Schooldays’ how there was a ‘blowing stone’ as it was called. A man in an inn blew through a hole in the stone back of the fireplace and the sound came out of a hill half a mile off. I thought maybe it was like that here, but there’s no wind.”

“No,” agreed Chot, “or, anyhow, there isn’t enough wind to make all those howls. It blows a little, but not enough for that.”

The boys, as I have told you, noticed a wind blowing toward them through the tunnel as soon as they opened the closed end by removing the barrier stones. And after entering the black horizontal shaft they had been aware of a constant current of air in their faces, showing that there was an opening at the farther end which they had not yet reached. But, as Chot remarked, there was not enough of the wind, or air current, to account for the noises.

“If the wind made it,” said Chot, “we’d feel a sudden breeze as soon as the sound came.”

“That’s right,” agreed Rick.

Again echoed the howls and wails, like those of the fabled banshee of Ireland, but the boys only felt the same gentle air currents in their faces.

“It might be there is a current of air higher up, away over our heads, that we don’t feel,” suggested Chot. “That might cause it.”

“We’ll see,” said Rick. He carried a long pole, and on the end of this he put the handle of an oil lantern, raising the light as high as he could toward the roof. “If there’s a current there it will flicker the light,” Rick told his chum.

The two boys watched the lantern. It’s flame burned as steadily as when Rick had held it, showing that there was no increase in the air current higher toward the roof. And yet the strange sounds kept up.

“Well they can’t hurt us; that’s sure,” said Rick, as he brought his lantern down. “I say let’s go on.”

“All right,” answered Chot, but there was not much enthusiasm in his voice.

The mysterious sounds kept up as the boys and the dog advanced, but Ruddy no longer howled in concert with them. Perhaps he felt that it would do no good, and then, too, the confidence the boys exhibited, though perhaps they did not feel, made an impression on the setter. At any rate he seemed more contented.

And then, almost as suddenly as they had started, the noises died away. Gradually they became less in volume until finally the boys noticed it. Rick was the first to speak about it.

“Say,” he called to Chot, “we haven’t heard that howling for some time; have we?”

“No, and I wish it would stop forever,” said Chot fervently.

“It might be that you can only hear it in that part of the tunnel where we were,” went on Rick.

“How do you mean?” asked his chum.

“Well, I mean it’s an echo and you can only hear it in certain places. You know back in Frog Hollow at home, there’s one place where there’s a big echo, but ten feet on either side of it you can’t make it echo at all.”

“Yes, I remember that,” admitted Chot. “It might be like that. Anyhow the howls have stopped.”

And so they had—at least the boys did not hear them any more. This was a relief to them, and they began to feel hungry. They found some flat rocks, raised from the floor of the old river tunnel bed, and sat on these to open their lunch packets and water bottles, feeding Ruddy on the scraps and pouring out some water for him in the hollow of a rock.

“He hasn’t lost his appetite, anyhow,” remarked Rick with a laugh, as he noticed how eager Ruddy was for crusts and bits of meat.

“He hardly ever does,” agreed Chot.

Then the boys kept on again, moving cautiously through the black tunnel. At one point they came to a ledge of rock over which, it was evident, some underground waterfall had tumbled when the river ran through the concealed cavern. But now the cascade was dry.

“Guess we’re stuck,” remarked Chot, as he looked at the abrupt face of the rock over which water had formerly toppled.

“Maybe we can climb it on one side or the other,” suggested Rick.

This they found they could do, Ruddy managing to scramble up after they had helped him over the worst places.

Again they found a fairly level road before them—a road that sloped slightly upward, this slope giving the downward current to Lost River where it had emerged at Uncle Tod’s mine.

Suddenly, as Chot walked along a little in advance, he gave an exclamation.

“What is it?” asked Rick, who was flashing his light upward, trying to ascertain how high the roof was.

“I see daylight!” cried Chot.

Rick hurried to his chum’s side. Gleaming ahead of them was unmistakably daylight, coming through an irregularly shaped opening like another mouth to the tunnel. And, as the boys advanced nearer they saw, moving about, in the open beyond the tunnel’s mouth, several men.

“Go easy!” whispered Rick, catching his chum by the arm.

“All right,” assented Chot. Ruddy was held back. The boys cautiously advanced until they could look out upon a level place, seemingly in some valley and there, hidden from view as they were in the tunnel, they saw a strange camp.

CHAPTER XXI
SCOUTING AROUND

For a moment or two both Rick and Chot thought that they had played a trick upon themselves, and that they were gazing upon the headquarters of Uncle Tod and Sam Rockford who might be entertaining guests. The same idea was in the mind of both boys. They jumped to the conclusion that they had circled about in the tunnel, had, somehow or other, gotten into the same shaft they had first explored with Uncle Tod and so had doubled back on their trail.

For there was almost the same outfit as that at Uncle Tod’s camp—the log shack, a tent—and, scattered about, were some mining implements, while at one side a flume box had been set up.

But there was this difference—there was water running into this flume box, while back at Uncle Tod’s camp his box was dry.

It was this welcome sight of the much-needed water that first convinced the boys they were looking at another camp—a strange one—rather than at Uncle Tod’s, though both outfits were much alike. But one camp was dry and the other was wet. Lost River seemed to be favoring this camp as against the other.

Then, too, as the boys looked with less excitement pumping at their hearts, they noticed that all the men were strangers. Neither Uncle Tod nor Sam Rockford was among them, and no men that the boys had ever seen before, though they had met several friends of Uncle Tod and his partner.

Also, as their eyes took in further details of the strange camp, they saw very many points of difference. The log cabin was much smaller and was not so well built, nor was the tent the same. The flume box was much larger, though not so solidly constructed—in short hardly any details of the two camps were alike, though in general one resembled the other. Of course the men were totally different.

“It’s another place all right,” whispered Chot.

“Yes,” agreed Rick, while he cautioned Ruddy, in a low voice, to remain quiet. He did not want a whimper, whine or bark of his dog to betray their presence back there in the tunnel. “Did you think it was our camp?” asked Rick.

“For a minute I did,” assented Chot. “Didn’t you?”

“Yep. I thought we’d doubled back through the tunnel somehow.”

“So did I. But what’s it all about, Rick?”

“I don’t know, Chot. But I can make a guess at one thing.”

“What’s that?”

“Those are the men—or, anyhow, they’re in the same gang—that took away Lost River.”

“What do you mean—took away Lost River?”

“Look,” went on Rick, still speaking in a whisper. “You can see where the channel was, running right into this tunnel. There’s the old bed of the river. Now it’s running off to the left so it flows into their flume box. They changed the river, that’s what they did.”

“I believe you’re right,” said Chot, after looking over the outlay that was before them. They could see it well, hidden as they were just inside the tunnel entrance. “But how could they make a river run in a new place?”

“By making a dam, or digging a new channel. I don’t see that they have dug any new channel, so they must have built a dam, or some sort of thing to send the river down the way they wanted it instead of letting it come through the tunnel to Uncle Tod’s mine.”

“But where is the dam, or whatever it is? I don’t see anything like it here.”

“No, it’s probably up above their camp. We’ll have to prospect around a bit and find it.”

“S’posin’ they see us?”

“We mustn’t let ’em. We can mosey around after dark.”

“Then we’re going to stay here all night?”

“I don’t see what else to do. We could hardly get back to camp until very late, anyhow, and we’ve got our blankets and some grub. It won’t be cold in here.”

“That’s right! It’ll be fun!” exclaimed Chot.

“And we don’t want to go back and tell Uncle Tod what we’ve found until we can tell him everything,” went on Rick, who liked to be thorough and complete in his work or play.

“That’s so,” agreed his chum. “Maybe, after all, we’re up the wrong tree and these men didn’t change the river.”

“Oh, I think they did—or somebody in with ’em,” said Rick. “But I’d like to find the dam—or whatever it is—and then we can tell Uncle Tod and let him do what he thinks best.”

“I guess you’re right,” assented Chot. “Well, what’ll we do first, Rick?”

“Well, let’s just stay here and we can see what the men do. Maybe we can hear what they say.”

Ruddy had quieted down, now that he saw his boy chums had no present intentions of engaging in anything that needed his canine wit, and was stretched out on the floor of the cave, making up some of the sleep he evidently thought he had lost. Rick and Chot remained just inside the opening of the tunnel—the opening through which it was evident Lost River had flowed at no very distant date.

The stream, it seemed, was a peculiar one. At times it flowed along in the open, like any other river or creek. Then it would dive underground, proceeding through a tunnel, or a series of tunnels. Then it would emerge again. The boys had been through some of the tunnels of Lost River, and there might be more further up the mountain. Of this they could not be certain.

At any rate they had come out at the end of one tunnel through which could be seen the strange camp, and as water was flowing in the flume box here, probably washing out “pay dirt,” it was reasonable to suppose the men had turned the river for their own use.

Just how such a big undertaking could be accomplished without considerable engineering work the boys did not know. But they had made up their minds to find out.

“We’ll just stay here until after dark,” suggested Rick, “and then, we’ll scout around a bit.”

“Have to go slow on the grub though,” proposed Chot, as, in the dim light that filtered in through the tunnel opening he inspected what food they had left. “We’ve got to get two or three more meals out of this.”

“We can, I guess,” said Rick. “And maybe we can shoot something,” for the boys had brought guns with them, and knew how to use them.

“Won’t they hear us if we shoot?” asked Chot. “Besides, there’s no game in here.”

“Oh, I don’t mean to shoot in here,” chuckled Rick. “We’ll go outside—farther up the mountain where they won’t hear the guns. Besides, we got to work our way farther up to find the dam, or whatever it is that has changed the river.”

“I see,” agreed Chot. “Well, what say we eat now? It’s most supper time.”

“I guess it is,” assented Rick. “They’re getting their grub ready.”

Some of the men could be seen busy about the camp fire, over which hung a kettle, and the boys wished they might have some of the savory soup or stew it undoubtedly contained.

However they were on an important quest, and they did not mind eating a cold meal. This they did, giving Ruddy odds and ends. Their water was getting low, but they were now within sight of Lost River and did not fear thirst.

“We can sneak out in the night and get some,” proposed Chot.

“That’s when we want to scout around—after dark,” said Rick. “I think there’s a moon to-night.”

In silence they sat on rocks, just within the mouth of the tunnel and ate their meal. They watched the miners at their supper not many hundred feet away, and it was plain that the stealers of Lost River, as they might be called, were unaware that they were being spied upon.

They laughed and joked—one even tried to sing—but the wind was blowing the wrong way and though a confused murmur came to the boys they could not distinguish what was said.

Rick had guessed right about the moon. There was one, it was at the full, and gave a glorious light from an unclouded sky. The boys stretched out to rest on their blankets before setting out on their scouting expedition. The men sat around the camp fire smoking and talking, and then one after another “turned in.” They left no one on sentinel or guard duty, the boys noticed.

“It’ll be easy,” whispered Rick as they prepared to leave the tunnel.

“What about Ruddy?” asked Chot. “Won’t he make a noise?”

“Not as much as we do. He’s a game dog and used to going quietly. I wouldn’t want to leave him behind.”

“No, I guess not. Well, let’s go!”

And then in silence the boys, clutching their guns which Uncle Tod had given them, started from the tunnel, followed by Ruddy who moved like a shadow. They skirted the camp of sleeping men and began scouting around for a trail that would lead up the mountain, along Lost River until they could discover where it had been diverted.

CHAPTER XXII
SOLVING THE SECRET

Though the moon shone brightly, there were shadows in the forest that surrounded the mysterious camp—mysterious in the sense that the boys did not know whose it was. And these shadows made silent progress difficult. Rick and Chot were very likely to slip and stumble over a rock or fallen branch, making a noise that would arouse the sleeping men.

Several times they did stumble, and thus Ruddy had the advantage over them, for his padded paws made no sound. But though the boys made several noises none of them seemed to have any effect. It remained dark and quiet in the camp—dark that is save for a glimmering camp fire and the silvery moon, the light of which was very welcome to the boys.

There was little for the lads to discover in the camp itself. They had learned this much while taking observations from their hiding place just within the tunnel. From their vantage point they had seen the water coming down a rocky defile, though its exact source they could only guess at. They could not tell whether it came through another tunnel—part of the series of mysterious underground channels in that part of the country—or whether it flowed along in the open.

This secret they hoped to solve on their night-scouting expedition, and after they had made a detour of the camp they listened for a sound of rippling or gurgling water which would put them on the right track.

“Well, so far so good,” remarked Chot when they had gotten safely some distance up the trail, above the log shack and the sleeping men.

“That’s right,” agreed Rick. “Ruddy, you’re a dandy!” he said to the dog. “You didn’t make a false move.”

“And not as much noise as we did,” added Chot as they both petted their canine companion.

“I should say so!” chuckled Rick. “That time we both nearly fell—I thought sure they’d hear us.”

“So did I. But I reckon we’re all right now.”

“I guess so.”

They had come out from under a clump of trees and were walking along a rough trail that led up the mountain. The moon shone gloriously making objects very plain to see. There was little wind and soon the boys heard the murmur of water off to their left—a sound for which eagerly they had been listening.

“There’s the river,” exclaimed Chot.

“I hear it,” admitted Rick. “Either the one we’re after or another. Let’s head over that way.”

They walked on side by side, with Ruddy trailing them. Rick had ordered his dog to heel, for he did not want the setter rushing on ahead through the brush, perhaps stirring up a skunk or some small wild animal that might cause the dog to bark, thus betraying their presence.

As they went on, the noise of the water became louder to their ears, until at last they emerged in view of a beautiful stream flowing in the centre of a small valley, bordered on either side by trees and bushes.

Though the stream was called Lost River, or by various other names in which the word “river” occurred, it must not be supposed that it was a large waterway. In fact it was not more than a good-sized brook, in places, though in others it attained the width of what, in some parts of the country, is called a creek. But Lost River it had been christened and so it shall remain, as far as I am concerned.

The boys stood for a moment impressed by the beauty of the scene that they had come upon. Under the moon everything was glorified—the rippling, sparkling water, the trees, the bushes and even the rough rocks.

“Say, this is slick!” exclaimed Chot, paying one of the highest compliments in his rather limited vocabulary.

“Nifty!” agreed Rick, adding his tribute.

But, boy like, they did not pause long to admire just the mere beauty of the place, romantic as it was. They had come upon sterner business, and Rick gave a hint of it when he said:

“Chot, I don’t believe this stream has flowed here very long.”

“Why not? How can you tell?”

“Because it’s too near the trees and bushes. And there aren’t many stones along the banks. When a river has run a long time in a place it washes away the dirt and leaves a lot of rocks, and where it washes away the dirt from tree roots the trees partly die. But this looks like a river that has suddenly been turned loose in the woods.”

“That’s what it does,” assented Chot. “Do you think the men turned it in here?”

“I guess they did,” agreed Rick. “And the thing for us to do is to find out where they turned it, and shift it back again so it will run into Uncle Tod’s tunnel.”

“Do you think we can?” asked Chot.

“I hope so,” answered Rick. “Let’s keep on.”

They walked for a few minutes longer and then suddenly, over their heads in a big tree, there was a rustling in the branches—a rustling not caused by the wind, for there was no hint of a breeze then.

“What’s that?” whispered Chot, ready with his gun.

“I don’t know,” answered Rick, as he, too, brought his weapon around. Uncle Tod had given the boys each a light shot gun, and they had learned to pick off small game in the woods, shooting, however, only enough for actual needs.

The lads stared up in the tree. The rustling of the branches continued and Ruddy, seeing that some business in which he ought to take an interest was afoot, stood at attention. Suddenly the dog growled and immediately there was a hiss above the boys’ heads as if an angry cat were there.

“Look!” whispered Chot, and Rick saw that his chum was pointing to two blazing, greenish, reddish spots of light; the eyes of some animal on which the moon reflected.

Chot raised his gun, but Rick said:

“Don’t shoot!”

“Why not?”

“It’s only a small bob cat and he won’t hurt us if we go away. Shooting will only wake up those men, and we haven’t found what we want yet.”

“But aren’t bob cats dangerous?”

“Not if you leave ’em alone, Uncle Tod told me. And we’ll leave this one alone.”

Ruddy had now seen the lithe form of the lynx stretched out on a tree branch overhead. It was not a large animal—in fact not much larger than some overgrown house cat. Of course it was more dangerous if cornered, but, as Rick had observed, it would not needlessly attack them if not molested.

Ruddy growled as if eager for the fray; but Rick knew even a large setter dog is no match for a small bob cat, and he ordered Ruddy away. The lynx continued to snarl as it glared at those it evidently regarded as its enemies, and remained in watchful readiness on the branch as Chot and Rick went on their way.

“I’d like to have taken a pop at him,” said Chot regretfully.

“So’d I,” admitted Rick. “But shot guns aren’t much good against a lynx—not little shot guns like ours. And, anyhow, we don’t want to stir up those men.”

Chot agreed to this, and they kept on up along the river.

“’Tisn’t so much a lost river now,” observed Chot as the stream murmured beside them.

“No, but it’s lost as far as Uncle Tod is concerned,” remarked Rick. “That is until he can shift it back—if he can.”

The boys made a turn in the trail and suddenly became aware of a slightly different sound made by the water. It was a splashing noise, as though a cascade were not far away.

“What do you imagine that is?” asked Chot.

“We’ll soon find out,” said Rick for, as they advanced they heard the strange sound more plainly.

And then, as they pushed their way through a fringe of bushes growing close to the edge of the stream the lads made a strange discovery.

They had solved the secret of Lost River!

CHAPTER XXIII
CARRYING THE GOOD NEWS

“Chot, would you look at that!” exclaimed Rick.

“I am looking at it!” Chot fairly shouted. No longer was it necessary to subdue their voices. They were far enough away from the strange camp so that no sound they made could be heard in it. “What do you reckon that is, Rick?”

Without answering, Rick and Ruddy, followed by Chot, drew nearer to some form of rude, rough-and-ready engineering work built across a place where the stream took a sharp turn, curving down through a channel that nature, or perhaps Lost River itself, had carved out through the long centuries.

And right at the curve was a sort of dam, fitted with water gates and levers, like those of a mill, or canal lock, so the water, at will, could be diverted into a new channel.

And that Lost River was now flowing into a new channel could not be doubted. Even in the moonlight, veiled as it was now and then by clouds, could be seen where the stream had once flowed. There was the rocky bed—now dry—but evidence enough that had the stream been left to itself it would have come through the various tunnels and so reach Uncle Tod’s camp.

But the dam had changed its course—had switched the stream so that it ran into the flume of the strange men just at the point where it should have gone into the long tunnel through which the boys had made their perilous way.

“This is how they turned the trick, Chot,” said Rick, as they walked out on a plank bridge over the dam, and saw where the wooden gates had been put in. The gates, of which there were two sets, slid up and down in grooves and could be raised or lowered by long wooden levers.

“This is how it works!” exclaimed Chot. “Look, Rick, when they want water down in their camp they open the gates on the right and close them on the left.”

“You said it!” cried Rick. “And when they want to let water run down to Uncle Tod’s camp they would have to close the right gates and open the left ones.”

“But they don’t want to let water run down to Uncle Tod’s camp—that’s just the trouble,” said Chot.

“It’s part of the trouble, but not all,” went on Rick. “Why did they put gates in here if, sometime, they didn’t want to let water run down the underground tunnels as it used to?”

“I don’t quite get that,” said Chot.

“Well, here is my notion,” proceeded Rick. “Here, you, Ruddy! Come back!” ordered his master, for the setter, sensing that he was not to be held in such restraint as heretofore, was nosing about more freely.

The dog obediently came to his master and Rick went on with what he started to say.

“It’s like this, I think,” he resumed. “These miners, whoever they are, struck some such pay streak as Uncle Tod did, but they needed water to work it. They couldn’t get water to their place with Lost River running where it was, and so they changed the course of the stream. They built this dam right where it curves and that was easy. But they must have had an idea that, sometime, they’d want to turn the water back again into the tunnel, so they made these gates. Then all they have to do is to open one set and close the other and the trick is done.”

“But why would they want to turn the water back into the tunnel?” asked Chot.

“There’s two reasons,” answered Rick. “One is Uncle Tod might make ’em—he could bring a lawsuit or something and make ’em put the river back where it was before.”

“That’s a good reason, but I guess from the way Sam Rockford talked there isn’t much law out here,” said Chot.

“Well, there’s some law, or it can be brought here,” declared Rick. “But the main reason, I think, why the men made gates to turn the river back into the tunnel, is so they could use the water themselves. Use it at Uncle Tod’s camp, I mean.”

“How could they use it there?” Chot wanted to know. “Your Uncle wouldn’t let ’em!”

“Not while he was there,” agreed Rick. “But—s’posin’ he left—gave up—then anybody that wanted to could jump the claim.”

“That’s so,” burst out Chot. “You mean your uncle might give up if he thought Lost River wouldn’t come back?”

“That’s it,” answered Rick. “And maybe these men figure on that.”

Chot paused for a moment to let this “sink in,” as he afterward said, and then exclaimed:

“You mean they moved the river just to make his mine go dry, and they want to drive him out and jump the claim themselves—is that it, Rick?”

“That’s my idea,” answered Ruddy’s master. “They built this dam and put in the water gates. Then they shut off Uncle Tod’s water supply and his mine went dry, while theirs could be worked. I reckon they figured that he’d give up—not knowing what happened to Lost River. Then, when he quit they planned to come in and take his claim.”

“But that’s mean! That isn’t fair!” cried Chot.

“Sure it’s mean!” assented Rick. “But I don’t reckon those men care. There isn’t much law out here.”

“We’ll show ’em!” muttered Chot. “We’ll show ’em there is! What are you going to do, Rick?”

“Well, I guess we’d better—”

Before he finished his answer Chot burst out with:

“Let’s turn the water ourselves! Let’s close their gates and open the others and send Lost River back where it belongs!”

Impulsively Chot started toward one of the levers.

“Don’t!” cried Rick.

“Why not?”

“Better let Uncle Tod and his partner attend to this,” suggested Rick. “They’ll know what to do. We’ll hike back and tell them what we’ve found.”

“Oh, shucks!” exclaimed Chot. “Let’s do it ourselves! We can easy lift the gates and close the others!”

Rick was half tempted. It would be a fine thing to boast of—to have discovered the secret of Lost River and to have turned the water back where it belonged. But there were other things to think of. True there was little law out in this part of the west, but there might be enough to uphold the men in what they had done to divert the stream. It was better to let older heads settle this point.

“No, well go tell Uncle Tod,” decided Rick.

Chot whistled dismally.

“It’s a long hike back there,” he said.

“We won’t start until morning,” decided Rick. “We’ll camp here until then. We have our blankets.”

Even though they were Boy Scouts, and accustomed to sleeping in the open with not much more than a blanket, it cannot be said that the boys passed a very comfortable night. It was unusually cold in the mountains. But Ruddy snuggled down with them and they managed to get a little sleep.

They made a slim breakfast, gave one look at the construction of the dam and water gates so that they could report the plan of it to Uncle Tod, and then started back, going a roundabout way to escape the camp.

This necessitated proceeding “overland” so to speak, instead of through the tunnel, and was longer, but they had the advantage of daylight and really made better time.

“Well, where in the name of the great horned toad have you boys been?” greeted Uncle Tod as they entered the camp and found two rather worried men to welcome them.

“Oh, we’ve been prospecting,” said Rick.

“Find anything?” asked Sam, dismally.

“Yes—something,” answered Rick, trying not to have his voice too eager.

“Pay dirt?” inquired Uncle Tod eagerly.

“Well it’s water instead of dirt,” answered Rick. “We went prospecting for Lost River and—”

“We found it!” burst out Chot, unable to keep still longer.

“You found what?” fairly shouted Uncle Tod.

“Lost River,” said Rick, modestly enough. “We found where it has been turned off and we can show you how to turn it back again.”

“Whoop!” yelled Sam, joyful for once in his life. “That’s the best news I’ve heard since the doctor said I had the measles and couldn’t go to school! Oh, whoopee!”

CHAPTER XXIV
TURNING LOST RIVER BACK

Uncle Tod, now that the first excitement was over, sat down on a stump near the log cabin shack and looked seriously and quizzically at Rick and Chot. Ruddy had discovered a bone that he had buried a few days before, in case he might get hungry during the night, and the dog now dug up this tidbit and proceeded to enjoy himself. Evidently he was glad to get back home again.

“Look here, boys,” said Uncle Tod seriously, “this is all straight is it—I mean about you finding Lost River?”

“Of course it is,” declared Rick.

“Pretty hard for anything as crooked as Lost River to be straight I guess!” chuckled Sam. This was as near to a joke as he ever got.

“Well, I mean you aren’t playing tricks on your old uncle; are you, Rick,” went on Mr. Belmont. “I know you sometimes do joke, but you aren’t doing that now; are you?” He glanced sharply at the boy.

Uncle Tod was very much in earnest and there was a look on his face which would have caused Rick to feel badly had the lad been playing any tricks. But he was not.

“We really found Lost River,” he said. “And we know how to turn it back again; don’t we Chot?”

“We sure do! I wanted to turn it before we came away, but Rick said we’d better let you do it.”

“Tell us about it!” begged Uncle Tod, and even Sam seemed to glow with a more kindly and happier feeling since hearing the good news.

Thereupon the boys detailed all their experiences on their expedition of discovery, beginning at the time when Rick first suspected that possibly the river might be located somewhere to the south and west of the tunnel passage through which it had ceased to flow.

“You boys had nerve to go through that second dark tunnel, not knowing what you might find,” said Uncle Tod admiringly.

“Nothing happened to amount to anything,” said Rick.

“No, but think of what might have happened!” exclaimed Sam. “You might both have fallen down some hole—yes, and Ruddy, too, and we’d never know what had become of you.”

“But it didn’t happen!” laughed Rick.

“Now about these men in the camp you speak of,” went on Uncle Tod. “Who were they?”

“We don’t know,” answered Rick. “Never saw any of ’em before. We couldn’t get close enough to hear what they said, or any names they used, but they looked like miners.”

“Must be the Lawson gang,” said Sam to Uncle Tod.

“I reckon,” was the answer. “It would be like them to try a game of this sort.”

“The Lawson gang’ll do anything!” Sam asserted.

“But I haven’t heard of them being round this valley in a long time,” said Uncle Tod, who had lived in this part of the west many years before going east to develop his salt land.

“Well it’s the Lawson gang, I’m pretty sure,” said Sam. “Worse luck!”

“What is the Lawson gang?” asked Rick.

“A crowd of men, led by a man named Deck Lawson,” answered Uncle Tod. “They make a speciality of jumping claims and stealing mines, and I suppose they must have heard that we had a good thing here as long as we could have Lost River working for us.”

“Then they went to work and stole a river instead of taking a mine,” said Sam.

“They might just as well have taken the mine as to cut off our water,” observed Uncle Tod. “The mine can’t be worked to advantage without water, and we haven’t been able to locate any other prospect around here that’s anywhere near as good.”

“No, and we never will,” declared Sam, with a return of his former gloom, that had vanished for a time on the receipt of the good news.

“But you say Lost River can be turned back, boys?” asked Uncle Tod.

“Yes,” answered Rick, and he and Chot proceeded to go more into details over the plan of the dam and the water gates. Rick made a drawing of it and showed his first sketch. When they had finished Uncle Tod said:

“Sam, we’ve got to turn that river! We just naturally have to!”

“Sure thing!” assented Mr. Rockford.

“Come on!” cried Rick with shining eyes. “We can make the place before night and open our gates and close theirs. Come on!”

“Easy, boy, easy!” counseled his uncle. “How many men did you say were there in camp?”

“Oh, about a dozen,” answered Rick. “Wouldn’t you say that many, Chot?”

“I reckon so. Maybe ten or eleven, anyhow.”

Rick looked at Uncle Tod expectantly.

“And you expect that we two men and two boys can go up against a dozen hard-shelled members of the Lawson gang?” asked Mr. Belmont with a quizzical smile.

“We got Ruddy, too,” asserted Chot.

“Yes, son, but we don’t want Ruddy to get hurt and I don’t want you boys to go back east in bandages,” said Uncle Tod. “No, we’ll do this thing in regular order and with the law on our side. I know the law will be on my side for I have papers to show that I own the rights to Lost River.”

“Well, let’s get busy then,” suggested Sam. “Will you go down to Bitter Sweet Gulch and tell the sheriff and get a gang to come back and clean out this Lawson crowd?”

“I will,” said Uncle Tod. “I’ll take my papers with me, see a lawyer, if there’s one in town, and then we’ll start Lost River back where she belongs.”

“Want us to come and tell what we saw?” asked Rick.

“It might be a good plan,” agreed his uncle. “You could give first-hand evidence—both of you. We’ll go right after dinner. You boys have been living on light rations and we’ll have to feed you up a bit.”

Seldom had a meal tasted so good, Rick and Chot thought, as the one Sam set before them a little later, and then Uncle Tod got out the rickety old car that sometimes went and sometimes didn’t. This was one of the times it did, and he and the boys rattled to town in the flivver.

Uncle Tod located a lawyer, to whom the case was explained, and the legal individual agreed that Uncle Tod had a right to Lost River if it could be turned back into the tunnel where it had flowed for many years.

“We’ll go before the judge and get an order for the sheriff to enforce your claim,” said Mr. Pitney, the lawyer. “We’ll have something, then, to back us up.”

The proceedings before the judge were brief. Rick and Chot told what they had seen, Uncle Tod showed his papers and gave testimony. There was a signing of some documents, a visit to the office of the sheriff and a promise made that the following morning a posse of deputies, well armed, would be at the disposal of Uncle Tod to see that the orders of the court were carried out; the orders being that Lost River was to be turned back into its old channel.

“Now we have everything legal and in ship-shape,” said Uncle Tod as he and the boys rattled back to camp.

Sam eagerly awaited their arrival, anxious to hear the news, and when told that the deputies would arrive next morning, and would start for the dam, Mr. Rockford began cleaning his rusty gun.

“Do you think there’ll be a fight?” asked Rick.

“I know it!” was the emphatic answer.

“Come on, Chot,” whispered Rick. “We’ll clean our guns, too!”

The boys could hardly wait for morning to come, but it arrived strictly on schedule and almanac time, and soon after breakfast two flivvers loaded with deputy sheriffs rattled into camp.

And now a big disappointment awaited the lads, for, after a conference between the chief deputy and Uncle Tod, the order was given:

“You lads’ll have to stay in camp!”

“Oh, Uncle Tod!” cried Rick. “We just got to go!”

“We want to see the fight—and help!” sang out Chot.

“Maybe you can’t find the place without us,” added Rick, hopefully.

“Oh, I reckon we can,” drawled the chief deputy, Matt Mason by name. “I know where it is—it’s the only location around here where they could turn the stream the way you say they have. I’d like to let you boys come along, but it’s too dangerous.”

But Chot and Rick looked so sad over the prospect of being left behind that finally, after a talk, it was decided they could ride in the flivver with Sam and Uncle Tod as close to the dam as was considered safe, and could then look on from a hidden vantage point, taking, however, no part in the fight—in case there was one.

“But if that Lawson gang gets the best of you, can’t we jump in and help?” asked Rick.

“Oh, yes, maybe,” said Mr. Mason slowly, “but I don’t aim to have them get the best of me. I know that bunch!”

So the start was made. Owing to the use of autos, necessitating journey by a longer trail than the short one taken by the boys, it was afternoon when they reached the vicinity of the dam. The exact location of the water gates were described by Rick and Chot and then they, with Ruddy, were left in a secluded spot, while Uncle Tod, Sam and the deputy sheriffs went on cautiously to compel the Lawson gang to restore the rights they had taken away.

“Crickets! I wish we were there!” sighed Chot.

“So do I,” agreed Rick. “But Dad told me that we were to do what Uncle Tod said.”

“Oh, of course we got to do that,” assented Chot, trying to be cheerful over it.

The sheriff’s men and Uncle Tod proceeded with all due caution until they reached the opening of the second tunnel, through which the water should have flowed.

“There’s the dam,” announced Uncle Tod in a low voice to Mr. Mason, the two being in the lead.

“I see it, and the gates, too. Pretty slick piece of work. But I don’t see any of the gang.”

“Nor I!” said Uncle Tod.

They remained quiet, taking observations. From the camp came not a sound, nor was there any sight of the Lawson crowd.

“They may have heard we were coming and be hiding,” said Mason.

“Trying to ambush us,” agreed Uncle Tod.

“We’d better be careful. They’re desperate men.”

But Mason and his deputies were cunning men, as well as brave, and by scouting around, and by tricks designed to draw the fire of any hidden foe, should there prove to be one, they soon established that the camp was deserted.

“They’ve vamoosed!” exclaimed Sam. “They’ve quit and we can turn the river back.”

“It does look so,” agreed Mason. “But don’t be in too much of a rush. Go slow!”

It was good advice, and was followed. But after another wait and a further cautious scouting around, it was definitely established that not a man was left in camp, though their possessions, scattered about, showed they had not long been away, and also indicated that they had departed in a hurry.

“They heard we were coming and scooted,” said Sam exultantly.

“Looks so,” agreed Uncle Tod. “Well, now let’s turn back our river where it belongs.”

The mechanism of the water gates was easy to understand, and no trouble was experienced in working it. To Uncle Tod fell the honor of closing the first gate that shut off the water from the Lawson flume.

The stream began to back up behind the dam as other gates were closed.

“Better open the second gates now,” suggested Sam.

The levers were depressed and the gates, made of heavy planks, slowly came up. Under them rushed the water, hissing and foaming.

“Hurray!” cried Uncle Tod, as the stream shot into the tunnel whence it had been diverted. “Lost River is back again!”

“Good work!” commented Mason. He and his men helped in raising the other gates that had been closed for several weeks.

And as Lost River was turned back, there came a sudden hail from across the little gully into which the stream had been diverted. A hail full of meaning it was, for a voice said:

“Hands up, you fellows! What do you mean coming in here on my mine?”

The men looked up to see, confronting them, a menacing figure of a man armed with a powerful rifle.

“Deck Lawson!” murmured Uncle Tod.

“Just our luck!” complained Sam gloomily.

CHAPTER XXV
THE RUDDY MINE

None of the deputies—not even Uncle Tod nor his partner—seemed surprised at beholding the leader of the Lawson gang. Perhaps they expected him. And it needed but a second glance to show that in the rear of Lawson were several other men, all armed with rifles. Still this did not ruffle Chief Deputy Sheriff Mason.

“Hello, Deck,” he greeted the outlaw—for such he was. “Hello!”

“I don’t say hello to anybody I may have to shoot!” was the sneering reply.

“Shoot? What for?” asked Mason, and he made no move toward a gun. In fact all of Uncle Tod’s party were now unarmed, having laid down their weapons to work the water gates. “Why shoot?” asked the chief deputy, smiling.

“’Cause you’re here where you have no right to be, and ’cause you have shut off my water rights!” declared Deck Lawson boldly. “That is why I’ll shoot!”

“Your water rights! That’s pretty good!” chuckled Mason. “Why, you took water from Mr. Belmont! You changed the course of Lost River; didn’t you?”

“I had a right to!” insisted Deck menacingly.

“Well, the court doesn’t think so,” asserted the deputy. “I have a paper here—”

He stepped forward, but Deck, with a quick motion, brought up his rifle and cried:

“Hands up! I said that before! Now do it!”

“Well, before I do any elevating,” said Mason calmly, “s’pose you just turn around and take a look behind you. Look around, Deck!”

“You must think I’m foolish!” laughed the other. But a moment later one of his own men, who had obeyed the suggestion of the deputy cried:

“It’s all up, Deck, they have us covered!”

And it was so. Knowing the character of the men he had to deal with, Deputy Mason had taken no chances. When the water gates were being lowered and raised he had sent some of his men off in the bushes by a roundabout trail, for he suspected that the Lawson crowd would return. And when they did return, and seemed to have Uncle Tod and his friends at their mercy, the men Mason had placed in ambush circled around and executed a rear and flank movement on the enemy. The Lawson gang was completely under cover of a number of rifles held by steady hands.

“All right—you win!” exclaimed Deck Lawson with an uneasy laugh. “But I have a right to Lost River.”

“What’s the use of talking foolish?” demanded Mason. “You know me and I know you. Give up your guns and go away peaceably. If you want to fight the courts will give you your rights the same as they would anyone else. But if you want to start a fight here—well, I’m ready for you, that’s all.”

“All right—you win,” said Deck again, with a bitter laugh. “But I’ll have my rights!”

“You’re entitled to them, but not to the rights of other people,” said the deputy. “If you go away quietly there’ll be no further trouble from me—but I warn you I’ve got plenty of men. You only see half of ’em. Look!”

He blew a whistle and from another part of the woods there suddenly appeared ten more deputies.

“Where’d they come from?” asked Uncle Tod, in surprise.

“Oh, just my reserve force,” laughed Mason. “I left word for them to follow us this morning. I thought we might need them, but I guess we won’t. How about it, Deck?”

“Oh, I know when I’ve had enough,” was the sullen answer. “But I’ll fight you in court!” he threatened Uncle Tod.

“Maybe he’ll win out against us after all,” whispered Sam, taking his usual gloomy view.

“Let him try,” chuckled Uncle Tod. “Anyhow I’ve got my Lost River back. Or I hope I have,” he added. “Do you reckon it’s running down at my mine?” he asked Mason.

“Well, you’ll soon see, for there’s no need of staying here. Deck and his crowd are going, and I don’t believe they’ll come back,” he added with a chuckle.

This proved to be the case. The outlaw—for he was so reckless and indifferent to the rights of others as to be called that—knew when he was beaten, and his men knew it, too. He talked big about going to law, but Uncle Tod was sure of his own claim.

“Well,” remarked Sam, when the excitement was over, without a shot having been fired, “this turned out better’n I thought it would. I’ll say that.”

“And it’s a good deal for you to say,” chuckled Uncle Tod. “But I’m anxious to get back to the mine and see if the water’s running. And those boys! What about ’em? Rick and Chot! Think maybe Deck Lawson and his crowd might have gone where we left ’em?” he asked Mason anxiously. “If they did—the boys—”

“No, I think not. But you can bring ’em here now. They’ll want to see the water running where it belongs—and it was their smartness that brought this about.”

A deputy summoned the boys and their dog from where they had been left some distance away.

“Is it all over?” asked Chot when the messenger reached them.

“All over—yes.”

“Many—er—now—many killed?” asked Rick, hesitating a bit over the words.

“Nary a one!” was the laughing answer. “Wasn’t a single shot fired.”

“Oh, shucks!” sighed Chot.

“Doesn’t seem a bit like out west,” lamented Rick, mournfully.

“Well, it’s better the way it was,” said the deputy. “Shooting isn’t healthy exercise,” and, rather unwillingly, the boys agreed with him. Still, they would have liked the excitement, they thought.

“Crickety! The water’s running in the old tunnel!” cried Rick, as he and his chum and dog reached the former Lawson camp, and noted the change in the control gates.

“Yes, Rick and Chot, thanks to you, the water’s running where it used to,” said Uncle Tod. “And it’s down at our mine by this time—at least so we hope,” he added, fearful of being too sanguine.

The boys were told the story of the attempted ambush by the Lawson crowd, and the counter-ambush staged by the special deputy. Then, leaving some men on guard, lest Lawson try to sneak back and again divert the water, the remainder of the posse began the journey to Uncle Tod’s camp.

It was accomplished in better time than going, for the trail was down hill, and, just as the sun was sinking out of sight, the place was reached. Mr. Belmont gave one look in the direction of the flume, so long out of use, and cried:

“She’s running all right! She’s running, Sam! Lost River has come back.”

“Well, I’m mighty glad of it,” said the partner. “If it will only stay here now until we can wash out some pay dirt—”

“Oh, horned toads!” laughed Uncle Tod. “It’s a wonder you aren’t afraid the world will come to an end to-night.”

“Well, it might,” conceded Sam, mildly, amid the laughter of the others.

But nothing like that happened, nor did Lost River again disappear. It remained flowing through the tunnel as before, and was once more in its own channel.

There were further court proceedings, but these only confirmed Uncle Tod in his right to the water and the Lawson gang seemed to have finished for good, making no legal fight as had been threatened, though Sam was always worrying lest they come back and again divert the stream.

Rick and Ruddy, with Chot, now settled down to an enjoyment of the time left to them in the west, for they would have to start back east in September, when school began.

One evening about sunset, when “grub” was ready to be served, a man came up walking into camp. Rick and Chot looked up as his shadow fell in front of the shack, and Ruddy growled.

The man—a stranger to the boys—held up his hand, palm out, in a curious fashion, and tossed a green branch toward them.

“What in the—” began Rick, but just then Uncle Tod came out, took one look at the newcomer, and cried:

“Jake Teeter! And up to his old tricks, too! Ha! Ha! He chucked you a laurel branch, boys, to show he was peaceable. Well, well, if it isn’t Jake! Say, got any more marked bullets on you?” he asked, laughing heartily.

“Um!” grunted Jake, as an Indian might have done. “All right?” he asked, questioningly.

“Meaning us and the camp? Yes,” answered Uncle Tod. “Your mysterious warning came in time, and we cleaned out the Lawson gang. Here, meet Rick, Chot and Ruddy,” and he presented the boys and the dog. “Sam, here’s Jake!” called Uncle Tod.

Sam came out of the cook tent. Though he and Jake had not seen each other in nearly two months they merely nodded silently, and Jake held up his hand, palm out, in peaceful Indian greeting.

“Isn’t he the limit?” whispered Uncle Tod to the boys, and they agreed that he was.

Jake was made welcome, and he chuckled as he heard what a stir his bullet message had caused in quiet Belemere. As Uncle Tod had said, this queer character just reveled in mysterious actions, for, a little later, Rick saw Jake trying to coax Ruddy into the bushes.

“What’s the matter?” asked the lad. “Is there something there?”

Jake silently shook his head, and, half surreptitiously, showed Rick a bone he had for the dog.

“Well, if he isn’t the very cheese!” chuckled Chot, later, when his chum told him about it. “Can’t even give a dog a bone without making a secret of it!”

A little later, after supper, Uncle Tod noticed that one of Jake’s thumbs was sprained.

“How’d that happen?” asked Mr. Belmont.

“Fight—Zeek Took,” was the answer, and partly in sign language, using as few words as possible, Jake related how, on his way to Uncle Tod’s camp, he had encountered the sneaking Zeek. Jake had heard from friends on his way out, of the outcome in the fight to restore Lost River, and knew Zeek to be a spy in the pay of the Lawson gang. Jake taxed Zeek with trying to learn things about Uncle Tod’s camp, to report to the Lawsons (as afterward proved to be the case) and there was a fight between the two.

“Well, you got a sprained thumb out of it,” commented Uncle Tod. “I reckon that maybe Zeek—”

“You should see him!” was all Jake would say. After this Zeek was not heard from in that locality.

In spite of his odd ways Jake was welcomed at camp, and began working at getting out the gold and other metals. It was he who discovered the secret of the weird noises heard by the boys in the tunnel. Once, when the water was shut off from Uncle Tod’s camp, to enable some improvements to be made at the flume, Rick and Chot undertook to show Jake through the tunnel they had explored.

While in it they heard the same disconcerting noises, and could not determine what made them until Jake suggested that they sounded like the voices of men, magnified, or amplified, as if by an echo.

And this proved to be the case. For, emerging from the tunnel, the boys found Uncle Tod and some men strengthening the water gates, since it was decided to leave the dam in place to better control the river. And it was the voices of the men, filtering in through the tunnel, and being amplified in the various crevices and chasms that caused the weird groans, howls and shrieks.

The boys tried it for themselves, being able, by making strange noises such as only boys know how to produce, to cause a veritable bedlam of sound in the tunnel.

“And it was the Lawson gang, talking and laughing just outside the tunnel mouth, that we heard,” said Rick.

“It was,” agreed Chot.

Thus all the mysteries of Lost River were cleared up. Rick, however, was wrong in one theory. The rocks the Lawson gang used to hide the opening of the second tunnel did not come from the tunnel itself, but from the higher part of the mountain outside, being rolled down into place.

“Well, now that it’s all over we can work in peace,” said Uncle Tod, “and make up for lost time.”

Uncle Tod and Sam were kept busy, with their helpers, in washing out pay dirt and they uncovered a rich streak, now that they had the much-needed water.

“Well, boys,” said Uncle Tod to the chums and their dog one day, “if you haven’t anything special to do suppose you come with me.”

“Where to?” asked Rick.

“Over to the old Lawson camp. There’s something I want to see about.”

“Is the gang coming back?” asked Chot. “If they are we’d better get our guns and—”

“You won’t need any guns!” laughed Uncle Tod.

In the rattling flivver they journeyed to the place where Rick and Chot had discovered the hidden dam and water gates. As they reached the place the boys saw some men working over a flume box.

“I thought you said the Lawson crowd hadn’t come back,” remarked Rick apprehensively.

“They haven’t,” answered his uncle.

“But there are men washing dirt in the flume box, and they’re using some of Lost River water. They have one of the gates open.”

“That’s all right—they’re my men,” said Uncle Tod. “That’s what I came to see about—if they were washing out any color.”

“Rick—look!” suddenly exclaimed Chot.

He pointed to a board sign near the flume box. It read:

THE RUDDY MINE

PROPRIETORS

T. Belmont

S. Rockford

Rick, Ruddy and Chot

“Is that true, Uncle Tod?” asked Rick, hardly able to believe it.

“Of course it is. I bought this mine from the real owners, whose claim the Lawson crowd tried to jump. And I reckon I couldn’t do any more than name the mine after Ruddy. I thought you’d rather have it that way than named after either of you boys.”

“Sure!” cried Rick and Chot. “Sure!”

“Then the Ruddy Mine it is!” chuckled Uncle Tod, “and I think the dog brought us good luck, for both claims are panning out well. Boys, it’s a good thing you came west.”

“I believe it is!” declared Chot.

“Whoopee, Ruddy! You never thought when you got swept overboard off that schooner into the sea that you’d ever have a gold mine named after you; did you, old dog?” cried Rick. He leaped forward to throw his arms around his dog, but he slipped and down a gentle pine-needle-covered hill Rick rolled, he and Ruddy together, the dog barking madly and joyously while Chot and Uncle Tod shook with laughter.

“Well, we sure have had a bunch of jolly adventures!” declared Rick, when he had untangled himself from Ruddy and walked up the hill.

“We sure have!” agreed Chot. “I wonder if we’ll have any more?”

“Not this season, I hope,” said Uncle Tod. “I had letters from your folks the other day asking when you were coming home.”

“Don’t mention it!” begged Rick.

“Let’s forget it!” cried Chot. “Oh, boy, but it’s great out here!”

I might say that Rick and Ruddy did have more adventures, and those of you who care to follow the career of a boy and his dog may do so in the next volume, to be called: “Rick and Ruddy on the Trail.”

“Well, boys, everything seems to be coming along all right,” remarked Uncle Tod, when he had looked to the mining operations being conducted by men he had engaged.

“You’ve got two mines instead of one,” said Chot.

“Oh, I only own part of this one,” said Mr. Belmont. “And, Rick, I want you to see that Ruddy gets his dividends in the shape of bones!”

“I’ll see to it,” promised Rick with a laugh.

And then, in the pleasant evening glow, they rode back to the main camp.

THE END