downward, forming a rough right-angled triangle. The parallel walls were about seven feet at their highest, hewn out of the soft shale rock. The entire chamber was about fifteen feet wide and twenty feet long.
Barrels and boxes, kegs and ropes, a tarpaulin-swathed machine of some kind and many polished lengths of round steel bars were heaped on the floor.
There was certainly only one way to enter or leave the cave. As she came back to the opening, she noticed the two men still chatting.
“I wonder whom they were trying to catch,” Doris mused. “Maybe it was Dave. Anyhow, they said there was no use trying to get him, whoever it was, so there is nothing to worry about, except how to get out of here.”
She crept nearer the opening to listen further.
“—can’t make a fool out of me,” she heard the stowaway saying. “I guess I’ve proved I can take care of myself. Say, listen! What’s that?”
“Sounds like an airplane,” the other man said. “It is! There she comes! It’s my sister. Say, I’ll have to ride back to her ranch,” the youthful Bedelle cried.
“Scared of her, are you?” jeered the man.
“No!” snarled the youth. “That shows how much smarter I am than you. If I’m to coax her into giving me half the ranch naturally her Charlie boy must pretend to be reformed. Zowie! I hope she doesn’t see me.”
Doris heard sounds which indicated that the youth was leaving in a hurry. His late companion chuckled to himself several times.
“The conceited little pup,” she heard the man say. “Won’t we trim his sails for him!”
Doris heard the airplane roar overhead, and then for a long time silence settled over the trapped girl. Only an occasional sigh or a grunt, or the scrape of a boot against gravel, warned her that the coast was not clear.
Suddenly Moon’s voice broke the silence.
“All right, Tracey,” Doris heard. “We might as well run along, too.”
“All right, Chief!” the bass voice replied.
Doris crouched back into the shadows as a pebble rattled down from above.
“I’ll just see that no lights are burning down here,” the late companion of Charlie Bedelle said, and suddenly a huge pair of boots greeted Doris’s eyes.
The girl threw herself behind a row of kegs, out of sight, but also out of a vision of the man.
“Hey, Chief, here’s your coat down here,” boomed the man’s voice, uncannily loud in the cave’s narrow quarters. “Everything is all right.” Doris heard him scramble out, and then suddenly the rock was rolled over the hole and the girl was plunged into the most profound darkness she had ever experienced.
“I wonder if I can ever find the opening in this blackness, and push the rock back,” she wondered.
She crept over the barrels and groped around.
“Funny how one can get lost in such a tiny place,” Doris mused, as her fingers touched damp rock or splintery boards.
“If Dave didn’t see me fall into the hole I’ll have to stay here until morning!” Doris recalled with a start. “And Uncle John is arriving this evening! He must be almost due! What a reception for him—and Mrs. Mallow will worry herself sick.”
Suddenly Doris stumbled upon the box which served as a poor substitute for stairs to the cave.
Mounted upon it, she tugged and pushed until her fingertips were sore, but she could not stir the boulder that sealed her in the cave.
“Suppose the air gives out before morning?” she thought, and for a time her heart thumped wildly with terror. “I mustn’t let myself think of such things.
“I must do something to keep busy, or else I will lose my mind. I know—I’ll hide these papers under one of the kegs so they will not be found on me if I am discovered in the morning.”
She took the documents from her pockets, and as she arranged them into a flat, compact parcel her fingers felt a familiar shape.
It was a paper of matches.
Just a cheap paper folder, containing waxed paper matches, the kind that tobacconists give away by the millions, but Doris felt the same thrill of delight she would have experienced had she suddenly found Aladdin’s lamp.
“I’ll make a torch from one of these stiff envelopes so I can see to hide the papers,” she said excitedly.
The flare of the match almost blinded her, and the little flame was close to her trembling fingers before she could see to ignite the paper torch.
By the flickering, choking fire Doris pushed and pulled at one of the kegs until she had tilted it far enough to kick the documents beneath it.
As the heavy barrel thudded back into place Doris saw black lettering stenciled on its top:
BLASTING POWDER DANGER KEEP AWAY FROM OPEN FLAME
CHAPTER XXII
Old Danny’s Grudge
“It’s getting darker by the minute!”
Kitty, slouching in her saddle from weariness, looked for the first time without pleasure on the purpling hills, some with their peaks golden in the captured rays of an already vanished sun.
“I can see that I can’t see as well,” Marshmallow responded paradoxically. “Listen, Kitty. No matter what Ben said, I think you ought to go back to the ranch and tell my mother that one of the horses ran away, or something, just so she won’t worry.”
“Marshmallow, I—I just couldn’t,” Kitty cried. “She would see right away I was not telling everything. I want to be right here, doing my share to help find Doris.”
“A fine active share we were given!” Marshmallow snorted.
“Listen! I hear a car!” Kitty exclaimed. “It is coming from the right direction. It must be Miss Bedelle, or someone from her ranch!”
“Listen to that motor!” Marshmallow whistled. “Some speed they’re traveling!”
The approaching car, swaying and bouncing over the rocky road, roared into view. Its headlights were already burning, and Marshmallow recklessly spurred his horse into the middle of the road where the glare shone fully upon him.
“Stop! Miss Bedelle!” he shouted, raising his hand against the approaching motor. “Miss Bedelle!”
The automobile skidded to a halt.
“Who are you?” came a woman’s voice, of a rich sweetness despite the sharp note of anxiety in it.
“I have a message from Ben Corlies!” Marshmallow called. “We are in trouble.”
Instead of Miss Bedelle, a man climbed out of the machine.
“I’ve
