In accordance with this reasoning, the boys turned south in the thicket then shifted to the east, then whirled back in a northerly direction. At one time they heard the shouts of the half-breeds on the slope far away to the south.
“They think we kept right on south,” laughed Jack. “Now,” he went on, “we’ll walk north a long ways, climb the slope to the snow line, and come out on the camp from above. How’s that strike you boys?”
“It listens good to me,” Frank answered. “Do you suppose Ned is back there yet?” he continued.
“It struck me,” Jack replied, “that the half-breeds we encountered were out looking for Ned or Jimmie.”
“You’ll have to guess again,” Harry put in. “The ginks we encountered were stationed there to catch any Boy Scout who came in answer to that signal. That’s some more of the work of that crooked messenger.”
“Well, I hope the bears won’t devour Gilroy while we’re gone,” Frank suggested. “It’s likely to be night before we get back.”
The boys walked for a long distance, and it was three o’clock by their watches when they turned up the slope. They would have felt less comfortable during the latter part of their journey if they had known that they were passing within a few hundred yards of the headquarters of the outlaws at the old mission.
After a time they came to what looked like a wrinkle in the face of the grand old mountain. They proceeded up this with no little caution, not knowing but enemies might be watching there. It was just such a place as outlaws lurking for prey or cowering from officers would be apt to seek. The wrinkle, or gully, led almost to the snow line and finally ended in a little dip which lay between two summits rising side by side, like jagged rows of teeth.
“I’m half starved and half frozen!” Harry declared, as he rested for a time in the depth of what had once been a mountain lake, but which had been drained by the gully. “If I ever get back in little old New York again, I’m going to get Dad to make me a gasoline buggy with a snout nine feet long, and I’m going to push traffic aside on Broadway for the next thousand years.”
“How often have you said that?” laughed Jack.
“Let’s see,” Frank put in, “this is the twelfth trip we boys have taken, either in the interests of the Secret Service or on vacations, so this makes twelve times that Harry has promised never to leave New York again once he gets back there.”