CHAPTER IX
A LANK MULE AS A DECOY
Judd Bradley, the young man who had brought the boy into themountains, stood for a moment watching the mule curiously. Then hestepped nearer to Ned, who was trying to quiet the fractious animal.
"Be careful," Ned warned, as Bradley approached. "Uncle Ike doesn'ttake to strangers. He may kick if you come within reach."
"Hell kick you whether you come within reach or not!" grumbled Buck,who had been brought from the cabin by the clatter of the mule'shoofs. "He reached over forty acres of rock to hand me one on thelaig!" he added, rubbing his left thigh.
Mrs. Brady came to the doorway of the cabin and stood there, outlinedagainst the red firelight within, with the boy in her arms. The childreached forth his arms impatiently, then began beating the old womanwith his small fists.
"Go an' get me the horse!" he commanded. "Mike wants a ride!"
"That's the prince, all right!" whispered Frank to Ned. "That's theprince of some slum alley in Washington. What he needs is a club,applied just before and after meals, and just before retiring, with adose at intervals during the night!"
"I'm not thinking of the prince now," Ned returned, still in a lowtone, for the others were not far off, "I'm wondering how Uncle Ikecame to be here."
"Broke away and eloped with himself, probably," laughed Frank.
"Yes," grinned Ned, "and put on saddle and bridle before he started!"
Frank's eyes now began to stick out.
"S-a-a-y!" he whispered. "We'd better be getting back to camp!There's something out of whack there! If the mule could only talk!"
Bradley, who had backed away at Ned's warning, now came up to themule's head.
"He doesn't kick with his ears, does he?" he asked, with a smile.
"He's an outlaw," Ned answered, wishing Bradley would return to thecabin. "He's thrown one of the boys, and we must be on our way. Ifyou have time before you leave, come up to the camp. We've got thelatest things in cameras and photographic material."
"I may get up there in the morning," was the reply.
Bradley and Mrs. Brady entered the house and closed the door, and Nedturned to his chum with an odd look on his face.
"I've seen that man somewhere before tonight!" he said.
"Then you'd better try hard to place him," Frank answered, "for we aregoing to see more of him in the future, if I'm not mistaken. Perhapsyou saw him on one of your visits to Washington."
"That may be," Ned replied. "Anyway, I may be able to think it outbefore morning."
Uncle Ike laid his nose against Ned's shoulder and gave him a push.
"He's in a hurry!" the boy laughed. "We ought to be, too! Is itpossible that one of the boys saddled him for a ride on the mountainin the night?"
"Just like Jack or Oliver. Or Jimmie may have returned and plannedone of his midnight expeditions!"
"Get up and ride," Ned advised. "I'll walk and try to place thatman's face."
"You might have seen it in the rogue's gallery," suggested Frank,leaping into the saddle and starting away, the mule pulling andrearing every moment.
Finally Ned called out to him to stop, and walked up to his side.
"What is the matter with Uncle Ike?" he asked.
"He insists on keeping down toward the canyon," was Frank's reply."We came cat-cornering down the slope, didn't we?"
"We certainly did," Ned answered, considering the matter gravely."Tell you what you do," he went on, "let the mule have his head! Lethim go just where he wants to. It is the instinct of animals tofollow precedent, same as men. A man will follow a cow path until itbecomes a city street, and a cow, a horse, or a mule will follow atrail previously used--if only passed over once! Let the mule havehis head, and he may take us to the place where somebody was dumped!"
"Solomon had nothing on you, Ned!" laughed Frank. "Go to it! UncleIke, it is you for the scene of the abduction! And you may go just asfast as you please!"
The mule started off at a fast pace, keeping to the bottom of thevalley and finally entering the canyon at the south end. Ned walkedby Frank's side, his hand on the stirrup, listening for a sound hedreaded to hear. He was afraid one of the boys had been thrown fromthe animal's back, and might be lying, suffering, in one of thecrevices or breaks which marked the bottom of the canyon.
After traveling some little distance in the canyon, Frank drew up andpointed ahead.
"Right over there," he said, "is the spot where we saw the smokesigns!"
"That's a fact!" Ned answered. "One of the boys must have come hereto investigate and left Uncle Ike without tying! The mule has beenhere before, or he wouldn't plod along so steadily. Suppose we leavehim here and walk on cautiously?"
"Just what I was about to propose," Frank agreed.
Uncle Ike seemed to resent being left alone in the canyon, which wasnow almost as light as day, save where the shadows of the mountain tothe east lay along the wall on that side. The mule was finallyquieted and left in a dark angle.
Moving in the shadows, the boys soon came to an angle in the cut andlooked out on the remains of a campfire. They pushed on until theycame opposite to it, but saw no one. In order to reach it they wouldbe obliged to cross the canyon, not very wide there, but flooded withmoonlight in the center.
While they stood in the shadow of the mountain a man came stumblingdown the slope ten yards away from them. At first they thought it wasone of their chums, but when the man's figure came into the moonlightthey saw that he was tall, heavily built, and also heavily bearded.He walked straight across to the fire and passed it, turning into ashallow cave there was in the rock of the outcropping ridge.
The boys saw him enter the cave and look sharply around, then hedisappeared as suddenly and completely as if he had walked into thesolid rock.
"We're getting all the stage effects!" Frank whispered. "That manducked into a moonshiner's establishment!"
"He ducked in somewhere, all right," Ned answered. "I wish we couldget across there without exhibiting ourselves to the whole country."
"I believe the boy that rode the mule is over there!" Franksuggested.
"Yes; and he's probably been picked up by the moonshiners," Nedagreed. "We've got to get over there, so here goes!"
The boys went across the streak of moonlight like a couple offlashes, and drew up at the mouth of the cavern. So far as they coulddetermine 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 aghost!"
"Do ghosts rattle metal?" asked Ned.
There followed another silence, and then the clink of metal cameclearer to the ears of the listening boys.
"Where does it come from?" asked Frank. "There's not a crack in sightin this rock."
A puff of soft coal gas wafted into the cave, causing the boys tohold 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 theboys were hidden and the space of moonlight in front. The man steppedout, looked up and down the canyon, and came slowly back to meetanother 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 stillout in the hills! When I was at the camp there was only one in thetent, and he sat there with a gun in his lap, watching for the othersto come back."
"Did you speak with him?"
"What for would I speak with him?"
"To get his story. What are they here for? That is worth knowing."
"Well, I didn't show myself because we're not supposed to be hereourselves!" came the other voice. "If you hadn't built the fireoutside to-night we'd have been in no danger. Now we've got a lot ofboys sneaking around. What did you do with the others?"
"They're in the wor
k-room."
"In the work-room, seeing everything! You're a bright lot! You knownow, I suppose that we've got to leave those lads here when we goaway?"
"I have known that all along. There are plenty of kids in the world.These won't be missed. It is a bad job, but it must be done!"
"They shouldn't have come sneaking around!"
The two men disappeared again, but this time Ned saw the opening tothe work-room, as they had termed the underground apartment, whenthey swung an imitation rock made of plank aside and stepped down.For a moment their figures were illumined by the red light of thefire within, and then they were no longer in sight.
"They're a cheerful pair!" Frank whispered.
"Counterfeiters!" Ned whispered, in reply. "And murderers!"
"How are we going to get the boys out?" asked Frank. "They'll bekilled if we don't."
"One must raise a ruction on the outside, and the other must sneak inwhile the outlaws are gone. That is the only way I can think of now.If you go out there and get Uncle Ike, and coax a couple of sobs outof him, and rattle stones, and shoot your automatic like rain, theoutlaws may all rush out of the cave."
"I can do all that, but how will you get in?"
"When they run out, they will pass me. Then I'll get in through thedoor," Ned replied. "If there's no one in there it won't take me longto find the boys and turn them loose."
"But if there is some one in there?"
"Then you'll hear shooting," Ned answered, grimly. "In that case,mount the mule and get back to camp and bring Jack and Oliver and alot of guns."
"But one of those boys must be in there," Frank insisted. "Some onerode Ike here!"
"We don't know who it is that is here," Ned reflected. "Anyway,you've got to get away with the mule after making all that noise.Don't go in the direction of the Brady cabin. We don't want that manBradley mixing us up with police officers!"
"Every minute counts!" Frank declared, "I'm off. You'll hear a racketlike the blowing up of a world in about three minutes! Good luck!"
The lads shook hands and parted. It seemed to each one that the otherwas going to his death, but only encouraging words were spoken.
In five minutes a horrible clamor rang down the canyon. Uncle Ikescreamed, and the beating of hoofs sounded like a charge of cavalry.Then came sharp, quick pistol shots.
Three men dashed out of the cavern and Ned crept in at the open door!
"I don't know what I shall find in here!" he mused, as he came intothe light of a great fire, "but I'll know all about it right soon!"
The Boy Scout Camera Club; Or, the Confession of a Photograph Page 9