“That’s so,” agreed Rick, with an uneasy glance at the dark and brush-choked entrance to the cavern. “If Ruddy was here he could soon tell.”
“But if he went in they might shoot him.”
“That’s right. I’m glad we didn’t bring him. Say, we’d better go back and tell the sheriff about this.”
“Sure we had,” assented the other lad. Pausing only long enough to walk around the car again, and to make sure that most, if not all of their belongings were there, the boys hurried back through the woods, across the fields and to the place where they had alighted from the trolley car. They were lucky enough to see coming the very electric vehicle they had taken out from Fayetville.
“You didn’t stay long at the cave,” remarked the conductor, who was on his return trip.
“No, but we found something,” said Rick, and they told their story.
“You’d better telephone in when we get to Roseland,” suggested the trolley man, naming the nearest village. “Then you can wait and take the sheriff right to the place.”
It seemed sound advice and the boys followed it. The sheriff was astonished and, in a measure, disappointed at the news. Astonished because no one of his officers had thought of looking in the direction of the cave, and disappointed because it was evident that the robbers had escaped. They had probably fled when the car overturned, injuring one of them, if not more.
“Unless maybe they’re in the cave,” suggested Rick over the telephone.
“We’ll soon find that out,” said the sheriff grimly.
The boys waited in the Roseland store from which they had telephoned, the sheriff telling them he would call for them there and take them on to the cave. And Rick and Chot were the centre of a group of wondering and eager men and boys who gathered when news spread of the locating of the car in which the robbers had fled.
In due time Sheriff Hart and some of his constables arrived, and a small cavalcade followed him and his party out to the cave. There were some tense moments as officers, with ready guns, entered the cavern calling on the robbers to surrender. But there was no answer, and no shots and when lights were brought and the cave examined there was no trace of the criminals.
“Probably they didn’t go in there at all,” said the sheriff. “They may have headed for this hiding place, but when they turned too quick, and upset, they just naturally scattered. Well, we’ll get ’em yet!”