aimed Horace.
"Let's go back. We've still got two rifles. If we stick to the
plains till we join father we can get along all right."

"Suppose we don't meet your father, what then?" returned Larry.

"Always looking for more trouble, as if we didn't have enough
already," chided Tom. "Of course we'll meet him. Anyhow, this is
no place to argue about it. If you and Horace can't protect me,
I'll take both your rifles and watch over the two of you."

There was a suggestion of mockery in Tom's voice, but taking it
good naturedly, Larry replied:

"Oh, no you won't. You can't throw your gun away every time you
get scared and then take ours from us. You just get in between
Horace and me. Horace, you lead because you know how to follow a
trail better, and I'll keep off the bears and raiders," he added
with a smile.

The movements of the boys, however, were more rapid than their
words, and they were traveling the trail once more ere Larry's
joking allusion to the loss of the rifle and the protection he
would afford.

So long as their way lay among the rocks they followed the trail
with little difficulty, but when they entered the woods their
troubles began in earnest.

None too self-possessed in the dark, even when going about the
ranch, when he entered the inky darkness caused by the maze of
boughs and foliage, Horace lost his head completely, and it did not
take the comrades long to realize they had wandered from the trail.

"Better let me take the lead, Horace; I'm taller," said Larry, at
the same time giving his brother a poke In the ribs as a warning
not to object.

"Well, you'll have to be a giraffe to see your way over the tops of
these trees," chuckled Tom.

Their plight was too serious to admit of jest, however, and after
wandering for half an hour, stumbling over dead limbs and running
into trees and branches, they halted in despair.

"I remember Si told us back home that when a man's lost he
generally travels in a circle," said Tom.

"So he did, and he said It was usually to the left, because a man
takes a longer step with his right foot," added Larry.

"That may help when you know which is the right and which is the
left of the way you have been going, but here we've turned round to
talk, so we don't even know that much," interposed Horace.

"That's a fact," admitted the elder of the chums reluctantly as he
realized that by facing one another they had lost all sense of
direction. "It's a go