Part 34 (2/2)
”Why, he headed for the old counterfeiter den.”
”Think you can keep track of him for a short time?”
”Can I? You know it!”
”Then take Dode with you, so as to be in communication with the camp, and follow him! Don't show yourself if you can help it, but if you are discovered keep busy with your camera. We are here only to take pictures, you know!”
”So you don't trust that chap, after all?” asked Frank.
”Yes, I trust him, but he won't betray the men he has been working with. In order to get the boy he'll have to go to the man I want.”
”All right!” Frank laughed. ”Come on, Dode! I might have known that Ned was next to his job. I'll come back just before sunset to report, if not before. If you love me have a supper fit for six of us ready for me!”
The two boys started away, and Ned, Teddy and Oliver went back to the pictures. After an hour or more Ned went down to the corral, as if looking after the mule. He saw no one on the way there, but when he reached the level spot, rich with June gra.s.s, he saw that it had had visitors during the day.
The gra.s.s was beaten down flat behind a boulder on the edge of the fertile spot, and there were cigarette stubs and half-burned matches scattered about. The lush gra.s.s still carried the odor of tobacco, and the boy knew that the watcher had not been long absent from his post.
He went back to the camp, and, much to the surprise of Teddy and Oliver, began packing.
”What's doing now?” the boy asked.
”Why,” laughed Ned, ”haven't I agreed to get out of here to-morrow or next day?”
”Yes, but--”
”We're going to pack, anyway,” Ned said, ”whether we leave or not!
There are people watching every move we make, and I want to convey to them the idea that we are going at once.”
”If they are watching us,” Oliver suggested, ”they doubtless saw Jack and Jimmie leave the camp.”
”They undoubtedly did,” Ned admitted.
”And will follow them, I'm afraid.”
”I've been wondering whether the boys got out of the hills in safety,” Ned went on. ”They were well mounted, and should have been able to dodge the outlaws. Besides, Jimmie and Jack are, as the boys say on the Bowery, inclined to be 'foolish in the head--like a fox.'
So they are probably safely out by this time.”
”But, still, I'm worrying about them!” Oliver replied.
CHAPTER XXIII
RACING MOTORS ON THE WAT
”Some day,” Jimmie said, as he urged Uncle Ike down an eastern slope of the Alleghany mountains, ”I'm going to have this mule put in a book.”
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