Part 31 (1/2)

CHAPTER XV

THE ROUND UP

Some miles from the camp the searchers next morning came upon an abandoned camp where there had been a fire and where, from the bones found there, they decided some one had eaten a rabbit.

”We're on the trail,” said the leader. ”We'll get him yet.”

An hour later one of the men reported that he had picked up a repeating rifle with the magazine empty. When Tad joined them later, he identified the weapon as having been the one used by Ned Rector.

The course he was taking, if followed, would eventually take him out of the mountains into the open country. Perhaps through some instinct, the boy understood this and was seeking to gain the open where he would soon get food and directions for continuing his journey.

They found no other trace of the one they were looking for, however.

All that day and the next they drew the net slowly over that portion of the Ozark range that cut through the southwestern part of the state.

”I guess we shall have to give it up,” confided the leader to Tad.

”Oh, no, we can't do that,” objected the lad hastily. ”We simply must find Ned and the Professor.”

”If you can show me the way how or where, I wish you would then. We are only a few miles from the mining camp. I'll wager a jack rabbit couldn't have gotten through our lines, so we'd have been pretty likely to have rounded up a man on a pony or a boy on foot. Don't you think so?”

Tad was forced to admit that this was true.

”It's my idea that neither of them is in the range now, at all. If they are, they're below the Red Star--gone by the place entirely.”

”That may be, but I do not see how it is possible.”

”You went by her, didn't you?”

Tad colored.

”I guess so. But it was different in my case.”

”Ah, that's it. It's different with them, too. If it wasn't, we would have found them long before this.”

”Then you are going to give it up? Is that what you mean?”

”Don't see as there is anything else we can do. If we don't come across them this afternoon, we won't at all. See, there's the Ruby Mountain already.”

”The Ruby Mountain! I've heard of that. What a peculiar formation it is. Almost blood red in spots. What is it--isn't there some superst.i.tion about the rock?”

”Well, you might call it that. There are those who declare they have seen strange lights appear on the face of the rock after dark.”

”Have you?” queried Tad.

”Well, that's another story,” laughed the leader.

”What makes it look so red?”

”That's the quality of the rock. It is red only when the sun or bright moonlight is s.h.i.+ning on it. Isn't really red, you see.”