d you expect to find Wagner there?"

"Did you build a fire in there?" asked Tommy.

The detectives shook their heads.

"Did you take a big piece of bear meat in there?"

"We certainly did not!"

Here was another puzzler for Tommy. Who had built the fire in the
cavern? Who had taken the bear meat there? The cowboys were not in that
vicinity at the time the fire must have been built. The detectives
declared that they had not built the fire, or carried in the meat.

"Did you find a fire burning in the cavern?" asked Katz.

Tommy nodded.

"And fresh meat there, too?"

Another nod from the boy.

"What do you make of it, Cullen?" asked Katz, turning to his companion.

Cullen shook his head, and a thought which brought a smile to his
freckled face crept into Tommy's mischievous cranium.

"I'll tell you what I think," he said. "We were in this gulch last
night, and saw the train robbers. They were on the summit, not far from
the Wagner flat, as we ought to call it. If anybody has been living in
that cave this morning, it's the train robbers. Say," he went on, with
the idea of giving the detectives a good scare, "those train robbers are
the fiercest fellows I ever saw. We saw 'em hold up six armed cowboys
last night!"

The two detectives looked at each other apprehensively.

"If they should see you standing here," Tommy went on, "and were wise to
the fact that you are Chicago detectives, they'd pump in the lead until
your heads looked like a pound of Swiss cheese."

"You seem to know quite a lot about those train robbers, lad!"

"He knows too much," Cullen declared. "We'll just take him along with us
and hold him for a few hours!"

"If you do, you'll get in trouble!" declared Tommy.

"No threats, now!" cried Katz.

"I'm not making any threats," declared Tommy who really was rather
anxious to have the detectives take him away to their camp. "I think
you're a couple of cheap skates, anyway, and I don't believe you're
Chicago detectives. I live in Chicago myself, and I never saw bums like
you on the force of plain clothes men."

The taunting words did exactly what Tommy had expected them to do. Katz
seized him viciously by the arm and started away down the valley. The
boy was perfectly willing to accompany the detective, for he believed
that by doing so he might find out what steps they were taking for the
capture of the escaped convict, but he pretended to feel great
indignation as he was hurried along ove