CHAPTER VIII.

“HOME OF THE FORTY THIEVES.”

Jimmie and Carl were now in a shallow wrinkle or gully which reached from the summit of the mountain to the shelf upon which the mysterious camp-fire had been seen. From their position they could not secure a view of their own camp, which was much lower down.

They could see the fire from which the mysterious signals had been given, and also the _Louise_ winging her way toward them, but they could not see the _Ann_ lifting under the stars. She was still much too low for that.

The increasing clatter of the approaching motors of the stolen machine, now not far away, effectually drowned the noise made by the _Ann_. In fact the sparking of the oncoming machine made conversation on the part of the boys rather difficult, obliging them to almost shout into each other’s ears when conferring together.

It was decidedly uncomfortable for the boys in the gully. A chill wind blew down from the snow-capped tops. They were glad that they had brought their warmest clothing, and only wished they had more of it.

“I wish we knew exactly where the fellows intend to land,” Jimmie said as the boys paused in their progress toward the camp-fire.

“Yes,” Carl answered, shouting until he was red in the face, “we ought to be right on the spot in order to give them an appropriate reception.”

“They’ve got their nerve, anyway!” Jimmie exclaimed. “They steal our machine and then they bring it right back!”

“Perhaps they just borrowed it for a joy-ride!” chuckled Carl.

“These fellows don’t look like joy-riders,” Jimmie argued. “They look like men who are here for some definite purpose.”

“They must think they’ve got us backed off the board,” Carl suggested, “or they wouldn’t think of bringing the machine back to the place from which they stole it.”

The _Louise_ came steadily on, flying rather close to the ground. As it came nearer the boys saw that the seats were occupied by three men.

“That accounts for their keeping in the heavy air next to the ground,” Jimmie explained. “I don’t believe they can make the summit with that load! They must have thrown off a lot of supplies in order to coax the old machine into carrying three.”

The machine passed over the camp-fire and proceeded toward the summit, passing almost directly over the boys as they crouched down in the gully.

This gully was little better than a wrinkle on the slope of the mountain. It began at the summit and terminated at the shelf where the camp-fire had been built. At some distant day a great boulder or a glacier had started at the top and cut this trail to the shelf.

The sides of the gully were quite steep; in fact, almost perpendicular in places. Only at rare intervals were the walls in such shape as to render egress possible. Wherever the rocks were nearly perpendicular there were little shallow caves half-concealed under beetling crags.

It seemed an ideal place for unlawful operations, and the boys wondered, as they sat waiting for some indication of the purpose of the men in the machine, whether they had not come upon one of the resorts of men who make a business of smuggling whiskey across the border.

Presently the _Louise_ disappeared from view, and in a short time following the vanishing of the lights the sparking of the motors ceased.

“It strikes me,” Jimmie said, speaking lower now, “that the old machine has landed on the shelf where we left her. Now, what do you think the thieves mean by such conduct? I think if I stole an aeroplane, or a cow, or a bulldog, I’d keep it away from the vicinity of the owner.”

“Aw, they think they’ve got a couple of boys to deal with,” Carl answered. “But they’ll find we’ve got good automatics and know how to use them if they get gay with us.”

“I’d like to go on a trip before I die,” Jimmie grumbled, “where I wouldn’t have to carry an automatic in my hand every minute of the time day and night! We butted into shooters in Mexico, in southern California, and in Peru, and now we’ve got into the game here.”

“I don’t like the automatic incidents myself,” chuckled Carl. “Whenever I pick up a book, now, and catch the hero drawing a pistol and pointing with deliberate aim, I chuck the story into the garbage box.”

The boys did not dare advance to the camp-fire, now, for should they do so their figures would be plainly discernible from the summit, to which the men from the _Louise_ would undoubtedly make their way. Before long, exclamations of annoyance were heard far up the gully, and now and then a sharp, round light made its appearance.

“That’s one of the electrics they stole from the _Louise_!” exclaimed Carl. “And they’re coming down here, too,” he went on, “right into this gully!”

“Yes,” Jimmie answered, “and there are two at the fire now, instead of one. Reckon the other must have been asleep.”

“They’re coming up the gully!” exclaimed Carl.

“And the others are coming down!”

“It’s a blooming trap!” Carl cried. “They knew we’d make for the camp-fire when they stole our machine. They knew we’d be so cold on the shelf near the summit that we’d freeze to death if we didn’t. So they waited until we got into the trap and started out from both ends to meet us. No wonder they brought the machine back to the old place with a combination like that working!”

“We might hide in one of these openings between the rocks,” Jimmie suggested. “They probably know every one of ’em as well as we know every burr and bolt in the _Louise_, but even if they do it will take them a long time to find which one we’re hiding in.”

They could see the two men who had left the fire scrambling up the gully, still some distance away. The men who were coming down were faintly outlined against the brilliant sky, and occasionally against the white surface of the summit. This party was also some distance away.

The boys searched about industriously for a hiding-place, rejecting several breaks in the rocks as being too shallow, and finally came to a cavern which seemed to extend a considerable distance under the slope.

“I’d like to know what kind of a hole this is,” Carl whispered as the two moved backward in absolute darkness.

“I brought my searchlight from the machine,” Jimmie whispered back, “and when we get in a little farther, so the light won’t be seen from outside, I’ll turn it loose.”

“You’d better do it now!” urged Carl. “When they get exactly in front they can see the light, no matter how much we try to shield it.”

“That’s a good idea, too!” Jimmie declared.

When the light was turned on it revealed a cavern at least twenty feet in width, extending back farther than the finger of light reached. The floor was level and smooth, apparently worn so by the passing of feet, and the walls held many shelves and openings, undoubtedly made by the hand of man.

“You see,” Jimmie whispered, “we’ve struck a robbers’ den, all right.”

“Had we better go in farther?” asked Carl.

“Of course!” answered Jimmie. “We’ll go in as far as we can. They’ll search the place, of course, and probably capture us in the end, but we’ll find out all we can about their nest before they get hold of us.”

“That’s a bet!” exclaimed Carl.

For a moment the boys argued as to whether they ought to visit the entrance before passing farther in, in order to ascertain exactly what the others were doing, but they finally decided not to do so. Had they followed Jimmie’s suggestion and looked out, they would have seen the _Ann_ hovering over the valley just beyond the shelf where the camp-fire blazed.

The boys did not understand as they passed in why they were not followed by the others without loss of time. As the minutes passed and no lights or footsteps came from the entrance, they grew bolder and advanced by the light of the electric.

Had the boys known that the _Ann_ was hovering over the scene they would have understood why their pursuers were too much interested to give them much of their attention at that time.

Perhaps fifty paces from the entrance the cavern was divided into two sections by a wall of rock which sprang up almost exactly in the center. The boys entered the one at the right and soon came upon a collection of barrels, casks and boxes.

“This must be the home of the Forty Thieves,” chuckled Jimmie.

“Yes,” Carl answered, “and we’re likely to meet old Ali Baba at any minute! I wish we could put the old rascal into a stone jar and fill it with boiling oil,” the boy added with a grin.

“I guess we’ll be the boilees of anything of that kind takes place here to-night,” Jimmie argued. “They’ll simply be red-headed when they find out that we’ve penetrated their treasure cave.”

“We’re always butting into something that makes our death desirable,” complained Carl. “Don’t you hear those fellows coming in?”

“I don’t hear anything, do you?”

“Not a thing!”

“They don’t have to come in here after us, anyway!” Jimmie argued. “They can just sit by the entrance with a little automatic and catch us when we get starved out!”

“Perhaps there’s something in here in the way of provisions,” suggested Carl. “If there is, it’ll take them a long time to freeze us out. And while they’re doing it, the boys will come up to investigate and get us out. Let’s look and see what there is here.”

Jimmie turned his electric on one of the casks and read the letters burned into the head.

“Whiskey!” he said turning up his nose in disgust.

“But they must have provisions here if they keep a bonded warehouse like this,” urged Carl. “Let’s keep looking.”

A long search revealed nothing more substantial than whiskey, brandy and liquors of various kinds. The boys sat down on a barrel and discussed the situation soberly.

“What a snap this would be for some of the hoboes we meet on the Bowery occasionally,” snickered Carl, after the possibilities of escape had been thoroughly gone over. “You take a real native-born Boweryite and he’d feel insulted if you suggested that he ought to get out.”

“Well, I don’t see any sustenance in whiskey!” Jimmie answered, gloomily, “and I think we’d better be moving up toward the front in order to watch our chance to sneak out.”

“Say,” Carl suggested in a moment, “how’d you like to get another look at those husky fellows who contributed the bear to our supper?”

“I don’t care about meeting them just at this time!” Jimmie replied.

“But see here,” Carl continued. “You remember what Mr. Havens said about the two men who were seen at Colleton’s office door in the Washington building. You remember the big fellow with the spinach on his map, don’t you?”

“I remember what he said about him.”

“Well, as has already been surmised, that big fellow is keeping company with Colleton. The man who got the inspector away from his desk is still keeping track of him, you may be sure of that!”

“And you think one of the men we saw at our camp may be the identical person, eh?” questioned Jimmie.

“Oh, it’s only a guess,” Carl answered, “but one of them may be the man who got Colleton out of the building, just the same.”

“We don’t know that Colleton was taken out of the building by the big man!” declared Jimmie. “Ben insists that the slim man at the office door was Colleton, drugged and disguised, but it’s no sure thing that he’s right! I think he is, but he may be mistaken for all that!”

“Wouldn’t it be a snap if we could seize one of those big fellows and have him turn out to be the right one? We’d take him down to the camp and put him through the third degree, and then he’d tell us where Colleton is hidden, and where the stolen proofs are, and who hired him to do the job, and a whole lot of other stuff calculated to put the mail-order thieves in bad with the jury.”

“Wake up, boy, wake up!”

“Aw, let me dream. And then,” he went on, “we could go to Washington and get the reward and bring it back to New York in bags and barrels——”

“Cut it out,” whispered Jimmie. “There’s some one moving just behind us! Wouldn’t it be a joke on us if many of these barrels should contain brigands instead of brandy?”