The Boy Scouts On The Range Part 15

"How do you make that out?" asked Jeb Cotton.

"By applying a little scout lore. There are no tracks at the mouth of the cave, yet this lion is fat and well-fed, so that it must get its food outside somewhere. Therefore, there must be another entrance to the cave."

"Quod erat demonstrandum," quoth Tubby learnedly.

"Which is all the Euclid you know," teased Merritt.

"Well," asked Rob, while Harry Harkness skillfully skinned the lion, "shall we go on or turn back?"

"We'll go on!" shouted everybody.

"If you guarantee no more scares," amended Tubby.

With the tawny pelt slung over Harry's broad shoulder, the little party therefore pressed on into the darkness.

"We'll have to hurry," said Rob suddenly, regarding his candle, of which not much was left.

"How far do you guess it is from the entrance?" questioned Harry.

"I've no idea," was Rob's rejoinder. "I half believe now we were wrong to try to find a way out this way."

He said this in a low voice, so as not to alarm the others, who were behind the leaders. It did indeed begin to look as if the young explorers had placed themselves in a predicament.

Presently, however, the air began to grow fresher, and, uttering a cheer at this sign that they were near to daylight, the lads rushed forward.

Still cheering, they emerged into a place where the pa.s.sage broadened, and in another moment would have been out of the farther end of the tunnel but for an unexpected happening that occurred at that moment.

Rob, who had been slightly in advance, gave the first warning of the new alarm. As the welcome daylight poured upon his face, and he gazed into a sort of cup-like valley beyond the pa.s.sage mouth, he heard a sudden "z-i-ip!" past his ear, like the whizzing of a locust.

The next instant fragments of rock scattered about his head and he heard a sharp report somewhere outside.

Like a flash, the boy threw himself flat on his stomach and wriggled back into the tunnel.

"They're firing at us!" cried Tubby.

"Yes, but who?" demanded Merritt.

"That's the question," was Rob's rejoinder. "I guess it must be Indians, but then, again, it may be hunters, who, having seen something move, fired. I'm going to try to find out."

"Oh, Rob, be careful," begged Merritt.

"That's all right. Here, Bill, lend me that long pole you've got."

Bill Simmons obediently handed over a long branch he had broken off to use as a guiding staff, before they entered the dark pa.s.sageway. Rob pulled off his sombrero and stuck it on the pole.

Then he cautiously poked it out of the rocky portal.

"Bang!"

Rob drew in the hat and examined it.

"Phew!" gasped Tubby. "That's a fine way to ventilate a fellow's lid."

A bullet had bored a hole right through the soft gray crown.

"Guess that's Indians, all right," said Harry; "n.o.body else would be able to shoot like that."

"It is Indians," announced Rob. "I saw one dodge behind some brush when I looked out."

"Well, what are we going to do?" gasped Charley, the younger of the Price brothers, a lad of about fourteen. His face grew long, and he began to whimper.

"Hey, hush up, there," admonished Tubby. "Boy Scouts don't cry when they get in a difficulty; they sit down and try to figure some way out of it."

"And, in this case, that is easy," said Rob.

"Huh?"

"I said it is easy. All we've got to do is to go back again."

"What, without the candle? Make our way through that dark place?"

"Of course. That is, if you don't want to get drilled full of holes by those Indian bullets."

"But supposing they follow us?"

"We'll have to take our chances on that," rejoined Rob.

"Well, you're a cool hand, I must say. You calmly propose that we shall walk back through a dark tunnel, with Heaven knows how many Indians at our heels?"

"It's all we can do, isn't it?"

"Um-m-well, I suppose so. Come on, then, if we've got to do it, the sooner we start the better."

"Wait one minute," said Rob, and, stooping down, he pulled up some dry brush that grew near the cave mouth. He piled this in a heap and set fire to it.

"Whatever are you doing that for?" asked Tubby.

"I know," said Jeb Cotton, "so that the Indians, or whoever it is firing at us, will see it and think we are still there."

Rob nodded approvingly.

"That's it," he said, and plunged off into the blackness of the tunnel.

He led the others through it at a rapid pace, but they did not travel so fast that they beat the daylight, however, for when they emerged at the other end it was dark, and the stars were s.h.i.+ning above them. Far below they could see little flickering points of fire, where the cow-punchers were keeping watch.

"Wish we were down there," muttered Tubby, as they all emerged on the ledge. "I'm hungry."

"So am I," agreed Rob, "and the quicker we get down the mountain the quicker we'll get some hot supper."

As he spoke, from the mouth of the tunnel, which acted as a sort of gigantic speaking-tube, there came what seemed to be the hollow echo of a shout.