CHAPTER XII.

SAM HARTLEY TURNS UP.

If the figure proved to be one of the outposts of Simon Lake’s camp, the situation was a serious one. In a few moments the big tree would reach the narrow passage in the rocks. When it did, two courses were open to the boys. One was to stick to it and throw themselves and their fate upon providence, or else make a leap for the rocks which were seamed and scarred. But in the event of the motionless figure on the rock proving to be an enemy, their position would be as bad as before. Unarmed as they were, they would certainly have to give in without a struggle.

But just as Tom had about decided that their best plan would be to cling to the tree and trust to luck to get safely through the narrow “gate,” something familiar struck him about the figure. It was that of a sun-burned man of middle age, clean-shaven, and with a conveying sense of alertness in his erect pose. He wore khaki trousers, much the worse for wear, stout hunting boots, laced up almost to his knees, a rough blue shirt, and a big sombrero.

In a flash it came across Tom where they had seen that figure before.

Another instant made the conviction a certainty.

The man was Sam Hartley. If any question had remained of it, all doubt was once and for all removed, as Tom decided to risk a mistake and hailed the man.

“Sam! Oh, Sam!”

The man on the rock started. His rifle, which had come up to his arm pit as the boy hailed, fell back. He stared before him intently as the tree came bumping at the rock. Before he could recover himself, from amid its roots two active young forms had leaped and hurled themselves straight at the stalwart figure of the former arch enemy of the counterfeiters of Saw Mill Valley.

“Great Scott!” exclaimed Sam, as Tom stopped wringing his hand for an instant. “It is you, all right. I thought I was pretty sure of you when I peeked into Bully Banjo’s camp yesterday when he had you on the carpet.”

“But, Sam,” cried Tom excitedly, “what are you doing here, and——” He broke off as a sudden explanation of the mysterious arrival of the knife flashed across him.

“It was you that lowered that knife!”

“Sure,” said Sam easily; “but, say, boys, we’re in a bad place right here. Let’s get back in the brush. I’ve got some grub there and a clean shirt apiece for you. I guess you’re in need of both,” he went on, with a smile, surveying the two dilapidated young figures.

“That’s right. Especially the grub part of it,” laughed Tom. “But, Sam, I can’t get over the mystery of it. You being here and arriving just in time to help us out of what seemed such a dickens of a mess.”

Yet it was simple enough as Sam explained to them a few moments later. He had been in Seattle when Mr. Chillingworth’s letter reached the Secret Service Department in Washington. His chief at the capital city had at once wired him in cipher to drop the case he was on and proceed with all haste to the neighborhood of the Chillingworth ranch.

In the guise of a prospector, Sam had been in the hills for some days, and, by a stroke of luck, he had encountered the day before the trail of the men he was after. An unlucky slip had betrayed his presence in the brush. It was that disturbance, it will be recalled, that had so excited Bully Banjo and his men.

He had seen and heard enough from his place of concealment, however, to know that two boys were in trouble, and it was no part of Sam Hartley’s nature not to try and help them. From various points of vantage among the rocks and trees on the cliffside he had watched all that had taken place subsequently in the camp of Bully Banjo.

After revolving one or two plans of rescue, it had occurred to him that his best plan would be to lower the knife, which the boys had put to such excellent use. From his eyrie high up on the cliffside above the cavern, he had later heard the shots at the river edge, and had surmised what was taking place. He had concluded, though, that the boys had been shot and killed as they reached the water, and had left the place while it was still dark, with a heavy heart.

What he had seen had enraged him still more against the men he had been sent to track, and he had made all haste back to his camp which was back of the “gate” in the rocks. It had occurred to him after his arrival there, though, that in the event of the boys having been killed their bodies might be carried down by the current. He had therefore posted himself by the narrow gateway in order to watch for them. His amazement when he encountered the Bungalow Boys safe and sound on their queer raft was only equaled by his delight.

To the readers of the “Bungalow Boys,” the first volume of this series, Sam Hartley will need no further introduction. Our other readers may be informed, however, that Sam was one of the “star men” of the Secret Service bureau in Washington, and that the boys had made his acquaintance at the Maine bungalow.

Sam, in disguise, was there for the purpose of getting evidence against the Trullibers in much the same manner as he was now after the defiant Bully Banjo. It will be recalled by our old readers that the boys had been of great service to Sam Hartley, aiding him in running down the Trullibers, and that he in his turn had been able to do them some services. How glad they were to meet each other once more under such odd—yet such entirely natural circumstances, when they came to be explained—may be better imagined than detailed.

“And now,” said Sam, when all had been said and explained, and the boys’ hunger fully satisfied, “what are you lads going to do?”

“Push on to the ranch, of course,” declared Tom. “It is important that we should get the medicines for Mr. Dacre without delay.”

“I agree with you,” said Sam, “and as it’s not much use my trailing those fellows any more—they’ll be away from there by now—I’ll go with you.”

“But then you’ll lose them altogether,” exclaimed Tom.

Sam laughed his light, cheery laugh.

“No fear of that, boy,” he said. “I know where their schooner is, and I’ll get them yet, just keep tabs of that. In any event, I don’t want to be in any hurry. I’m going to give this Bully Banjo all the rope he wants, and then round him and his gang up when he least expects it.”

“All by yourself?” asked Jack amazedly.

Sam laughed again.

“Well, hardly,” he said. “It will take a dozen or more of us to handle that job when the time comes. But in the meantime I don’t want to give him any idea that he is being watched or that the Secret Service is after him. That’s the way we always do things—wait till we are ready and the plum’s right for picking, and then go and get it with neatness and dispatch.”

“That’s why you didn’t let Mr. Chillingworth know you were in the vicinity, then?” cried Tom.

“That’s it,” agreed Sam Hartley. “You see, I figured that they were likely to be watching his place, and so I gave it a wide berth. But I guess there’s no harm in showing myself to him now. It’s evident that Bully Banjo doesn’t fear anything, or he’d not be running the Chinks through so boldly.”

Sam walked off into the brush a little way and soon reappeared with a small burro. Helped by the boys, he loaded his cooking utensils and other camping apparatus on the little creature’s back and then they set off through the brush, headed for a trail of which Sam knew. It was characteristic of Sam Hartley that already he was more familiar with the country about than most of the ranchers.

“There’s one thing that puzzles me, though,” he said, “and that is how those fellows ever get into the canyon yonder from the sea.”

“Why they come in by a trail, don’t they?” asked Jack innocently.

“Oh, no they don’t, for I watched them pretty sharply. I’m willing to swear that they didn’t come in by any trail. No, sir,” grunted Sam, with an air of conviction. “Either those rascals have an airship or else they travel under ground.”

“Well, they haven’t got an airship, that’s certain,” laughed Tom.

“That’s right,” agreed the detective; “therefore, they come under the ridge of hills that separates the canyon from the sea. But how—well, I’ll tell you,” he went on, without waiting for the boys to speak. “My theory is that this river burrows its way under that ridge, and that the rascals have some sort of a tunnel there they get through.”

“Do you really think so?” asked Tom, rather frankly incredulous.

“I do. It sounds wild, I admit, but how else are you to account for it. After all, there’s nothing very uncommon in rivers running under a range of hills. Why’s there’s one does it right up at my old home in New York State, and in California, and all through the west there are any amount of such waterways. The only real novelty in it is the fact that these rascals have been able to use it as a short cut to this canyon. At any rate, I’m going to explore it some day when I get time.”

“And shut them off from it?” asked Jack.

“Well, it might come in handy to use as a trap,” mused Sam Hartley. “But it’s no use figuring so far ahead till we know if there is such a thing in existence.”

“That’s right,” agreed the boys, and for some time after that they were far too busy getting through the close-growing brush to do much talking. At last they emerged, as Sam had foretold they would, on a rough trail, not unlike the one by which they had traveled into so much unlooked-for trouble.

“Now, then,” said Sam, “the next thing is to locate the Chillingworth ranch. We can’t be so awfully far from it.”

“How are we ever going to get a line on it,” wondered Jack, “I’m all twisted about now.”

But Tom who had observed Sam Hartley’s way of doing things on more than one previous occasion, said nothing. He just watched Sam as the latter tied the burro to a tree, and then, diving into the pocket of his mackintosh coat, produced a map. From its grimy condition it seemed to have been well handled. Along the edges of the folds it was torn by much folding and unfolding.

Selecting a flat rock, Sam spread the map out and the boys saw that it was a rough “sketch,” one drawn with pen and ink. Several places on it were marked in red ink. Sam laid a finger on one of these and remarked briefly:

“Chillingworth’s.”

“I don’t see how that helps,” began Jack, but a look from Tom stopped him, and presently he was glad he had not said more, for Sam produced a compass and a pair of parallel rulers. Gazing carefully over the map, he picked out a spot which he said was approximately the one on which they then stood. He then laid the rulers from that spot to the red-inked portion of the map representing Mr. Chillingworth’s place.

“A straight course, almost due northeast from here, and we’ll hit it,” he decided, folding the rulers and putting them carefully away. Then he methodically replaced the map in its envelope.

A few minutes later they set out on the course Sam had outlined. He planned to travel across country, the sure-footed burro being as much at home on the rough mountainside as on a trail.

“Lay hold of the ropes at the side of the pack if you get tired,” he advised the boys. “You’ll find it helps a lot.”

After an hour’s traveling, of a sort to which they had never been accustomed, the boys were glad to accept this advice, and found themselves greatly aided.

Their way lay over bowlder-strewn ground, under towering columnar trunks of great trees of the pine tribe. The lofty conifers entwined their dark branches high in the air, making the forest floor beneath cool and dim.

It was noon when Sam Hartley, consulting map and compass once more, struck off to the east.

“We ought to be there in ten minutes,” he said, without a trace of hesitation in his tone. A sea captain could not have been more confident of bringing his vessel across the ocean into a designated port than Sam was of landing in the exact spot for which he had laid his calculations.

As a matter of fact, it was half an hour before they emerged from the pine woods into a clearing littered with stumps and blackened trunks. Before them was a half-grown corn field, and traces of cultivation were all about them. In a roughly fenced pasture lot—cleared like the rest from the virgin forest—were some cattle and horses.

Across the corn field could be seen a long, low house of logs, with a rough-shingled roof. A little distance from it were some barns painted a dull red and made of undressed lumber, and a big corral with a hay stack in the center of it.

As they struck out, skirting the edge of the corn field, toward the house, the death-like quiet that had reigned about it was ruefully broken. From behind one of the barns there suddenly emerged a blue-bloused figure from whose head a pigtail stuck out behind as it flew along. Hardly had the new arrivals taken in this, before, behind the Chinaman, came a second figure, that of a woman in a blue sun bonnet and a pink print dress. They could see that she had a rifle in her hands, and as they watched she raised it and fired after the retreating Chinaman.

But she did not hit him, apparently—even if such had been her intention—for he kept straight on and vanished in an instant in the dark woods at the edge of the clearing.

“Gee whiz!” exclaimed Sam Hartley, hastening forward. “What’s the meaning of this drama?”

The words had hardly left his lips, before the woman who had put the Chinaman to such precipitate flight espied the approach of the newcomers.

They were about to hail her when, to their amazement, she raised her rifle to her shoulder once more. This time it was most unmistakably trained upon them and the good-looking face behind the sights bore an expression that seemed to say as plain as print:

“Don’t come any nearer if you want to avoid trouble.”