Part 13 (1/2)
”I believe the boy that rode the mule is over there!” Frank suggested.
”Yes; and he's probably been picked up by the moons.h.i.+ners,” Ned agreed. ”We've got to get over there, so here goes!”
The boys went across the streak of moonlight like a couple of flashes, and drew up at the mouth of the cavern. So far as they could determine no one had observed them.
They crept to the very back of the cave and huddled close together, listening.
”Not a soul in sight!” Frank whispered. ”That might have been a ghost!”
”Do ghosts rattle metal?” asked Ned.
There followed another silence, and then the clink of metal came clearer to the ears of the listening boys.
”Where does it come from?” asked Frank. ”There's not a crack in sight in this rock.”
A puff of soft coal gas wafted into the cave, causing the boys to hold their breaths. Then, in spite of all he could do to prevent it, Frank sneezed.
Almost instantly a dark figure appeared between the place where the boys were hidden and the s.p.a.ce of moonlight in front. The man stepped out, looked up and down the canyon, and came slowly back to meet another figure.
”Nothing doing!” a gruff voice said.
”But that wasn't any bird!” insisted another gruff voice.
”Well, you may look for yourself!”
”I tell you,” the second speaker went on, ”that those boys are still out in the hills! When I was at the camp there was only one in the tent, and he sat there with a gun in his lap, watching for the others to come back.”
”Did you speak with him?”
”What for would I speak with him?”
”To get his story. What are they here for? That is worth knowing.”
”Well, I didn't show myself because we're not supposed to be here ourselves!” came the other voice. ”If you hadn't built the fire outside to-night we'd have been in no danger. Now we've got a lot of boys sneaking around. What did you do with the others?”
”They're in the work-room.”
”In the work-room, seeing everything! You're a bright lot! You know now, I suppose that we've got to leave those lads here when we go away?”
”I have known that all along. There are plenty of kids in the world.
These won't be missed. It is a bad job, but it must be done!”
”They shouldn't have come sneaking around!”
The two men disappeared again, but this time Ned saw the opening to the work-room, as they had termed the underground apartment, when they swung an imitation rock made of plank aside and stepped down.
For a moment their figures were illumined by the red light of the fire within, and then they were no longer in sight.
”They're a cheerful pair!” Frank whispered.
”Counterfeiters!” Ned whispered, in reply. ”And murderers!”