eir
lanterns and inspect the rocky walls of the underground tunnel which
echoed so strangely to their footsteps, and through which swept
strange, cold and clammy winds.

"Well, I reckon we'll have to go all the way to the end before we
discover anything, if we do find it," said Bud, when they had walked on
for over an hour. Their pace was slow because of the uneven footing.

"And when we get to the other end and find the water running into the
pipe at the dam in Pocut River, what then?" asked Nort.

"We'll hardly find that, I think," said Bud. "Or, I mean, we won't
have to go all the way to the other end if the water is found running
there."

"Why not?" asked Dick.

"Because, if the water's running in from the dam end of the pipe, we'll
meet the stream before we get all the way through the tunnel," Bud
explained. "I meant to call up on the telephone and find out if
everything was all right at the river end before we started out, but I
forgot. My theory is that the stream gets into this tunnel from the
river all right, but is shunted off before it reaches us," he added.

"How shunted?" Dick wanted to know.

"That's what I can't tell," spoke Bud. "But why try to puzzle this out
until we get something better to work on? I'm hungry! What do you say
that we eat?"

"Suits me," agreed Nort.

"I'm not going to vote in the negative," asserted Dick.

They judged that they were about a quarter way through the mysterious
tunnel now, and, setting down the lanterns on the rocky floor, the boy
ranchers took out the food they had brought with them. It would be
risky to kindle a fire in that enclosed place, Bud decided, as the
smoke might choke them, though so far they had found an abundance of
fresh air, a current blowing part of the time in their faces, and part
of the time in the opposite direction. This proved that there was a
good draft in the elongated cave, but it was voted best not to take any
chances, though there was plenty of dried driftwood on the tunnel
floor, and this could have been used for a blaze.

But the boys sat about in the gleam of their lanterns, and, while they
ate the sandwiches they had brought, they talked of the strange
happenings that had led up to this venture in which they were now
joined.

Suddenly Bud, who had just taken up a piece of fruit cake, part of a
chunk that his pretty sister Nell had sent over from the main ranch
house a day or so before, stopped chewing in order to li