Ralph, “you are a genuine friend, Joe.”
Ralph and Zeph had to wait around the restaurant all the afternoon. There was only an occasional customer, and Joe had plenty of time to spare. He took a rare delight in showing his friends his treasures, as he called them.
About dusk Joe got the food supply ready for the party in the woods. He hitched up the horse to a wagon, arranged some blankets and hay in the bottom of the vehicle, so that his friends could hide themselves, and soon all was ready for the drive into the timber.
Ralph managed to look out as they proceeded into the woods. The wagon was driven about a mile. Then Joe got out and set the basket under a tree.
A little distance from it he got out again, took off a wheel, left it lying on the ground, unhitched the horse, and rode away on the back of the animal. The vehicle, to a casual observer, would suggest the appearance of a genuine breakdown.
“Now, Zeph,” said Ralph as both arranged their coverings so they could view tree and basket clearly, “no rash moves.”
“If anybody comes, what then?” inquired the farmer boy.
“We shall follow them, but with great caution. Keep close to me, so that I can give you special instructions, if it becomes necessary.”
“Good,” said Zeph. “That will be soon, for there they are!”
Two figures had appeared at the tree. One took up the basket, the other glanced around stealthily. Ralph recognized both of them, even in the dim twilight, at some distance away. One was Ike Slump, the other his old-time crony and accomplice, Mort Bemis.
CHAPTER VIII
THE HIDDEN PLUNDER
“That’s the fellow who brought the package of silk to old Ames,” whispered Zeph, staring hard from under covert at Slump.
“Yes, I recognize him,” responded Ralph in quite as guarded a tone. “Quiet, now, Zeph.”
Ike Slump and Mort Bemis continued to linger at the tree. They were looking at the wagon and beyond it.
“Say,” spoke the former to his companion, “what’s wrong?”
“How wrong?” inquired Mort.
“Why, some way our plans appear to have slipped a cog. There’s the wagon broken down and the boy has gone with the horse. Two of our men were to stop him, you know, and keep him here while we used the wagon.”
“Maybe they’re behind time. What’s the matter with our holding the boy till they come?”
“The very thing,” responded Ike, and, leaving the basket where it was, he and Mort ran after Limpy Joe and the horse.
“Get out of here, quick,” ordered Ralph to Zeph. “If we don’t, we shall probably be carried into the camp of the enemy.”
“Isn’t that just exactly the place that you want to reach?” inquired the farmer boy coolly.
“Not in this way. Out with you, and into the bushes. Don’t delay, Zeph, drop flat, some one else is coming.”
It was a wonder they were not discovered, for almost immediately two men came running towards the spot. They were doubtless the persons Ike Slump had referred to, for they gave a series of signal whistles, responded to by their youthful accomplices, who, a minute later, came into view leading the horse of which Limpy Joe was astride.
“We were late,” panted one of the men.
“Should think you were,” retorted Ike Slump. “This boy nearly got away. Say, if you wasn’t a cripple,” he continued to the young restaurant keeper, “I’d give you something for whacking me with that crutch of yours.”
“I’d whack you again, if it would do any good,” said the plucky fellow. “You’re a nice crowd, you are, bothering me this way after I’ve probably saved you from starvation the last week.”
“That’s all right, sonny,” drawled out one of the men. “We paid you for what you’ve done for us, and we will pay you still better for simply coming to our camp and staying there a prisoner, until we use that rig of yours for a few hours.”
“If you wanted to borrow the rig, why didn’t you do so in a decent fashion?” demanded Joe indignantly.
“You keep quiet, now,” advised the man who carried on the conversation. “We know our business. Here, Slump, you and Mort help get this wheel on the wagon and hitch up the horse.”
They forced Joe into the wagon bottom and proceeded to get ready for a drive into the woods.
“Bet Joe is wondering how we came to get out of that wagon,” observed Zeph to Ralph.
“Don’t talk,” said Ralph. “Now, when they start away, I will follow, you remain here.”
“Right here?”
“Yes, so that I may find you when I come back, and so that you can follow the wagon when it comes out of the woods again if I am not on hand.”
“You think they are going to move some of their plunder in the wagon?”
“Exactly,” replied the young fireman.
“Well, so do I. They won’t get far with it, though, if I am after them,” boasted Zeph. “Wish I had a detective star and some weapons.”
“The safest way to do is to follow them until they get near a town or settlement, and then go for assistance and arrest them,” advised Ralph. “Now, then, Zeph, make no false moves.”
“No, I will follow your orders strictly,” pledged the farmer boy.
The basket was lifted into the wagon by Ike, who, with Mort, led the horse through the intricate timber and brushwood. Progress was difficult and they proceeded slowly. As soon as it was safe to do so, Ralph left Zeph. The two men had taken up the trail of the wagon, guarding its rear so that Joe could not escape.
Ralph kept sight of them for half-an-hour and was led deeper and deeper into the woods. These lined the railroad cut, and he wondered that the gang of robbers had dared to camp so near to the recent scene of their thieving operations.
At last the young fireman was following only two men, for he could no longer see the wagon.
“Perhaps they have left Ike and Bemis to go ahead with the wagon and they are reaching the camp by a short cut,” reflected Ralph. “Why, no,” he suddenly exclaimed, as the men turned aside to take a new path. “These are not the same men at all who were with the wagon. I am off the trail, I am following some one else.”
Ralph made this discovery with some surprise. Certainly he had got mixed up in cautiously trailing the enemy at a distance. He wondered if the two men he was now following belonged to Ike Slump’s crowd.
“I must assume they do,” ruminated Ralph, “at least for the present. They are bound for some point in the woods, of course, and I shall soon know their destination.”
The two men proceeded for over a mile. They commenced an ascent where the cliffs lining the railroad cut began. The place was thick with underbrush and quite rocky in places,
