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 space 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.
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