It must come out somewhere and I'll bank on its coming
out where you say. If it doesn't and--"

"Don't talk like that, Bert," I said; "it's _got_ to, if _you_ want it
to. What is it you want me to do?"

He said, "I want you to beat it up through the mountains that close in
Nick's Valley. That way you'll get to the lake. Don't expect to see
Nick's Cove, because it's off the map. When you get to the lake, find
somebody. Get over to camp if you can--I don't care how. Maybe the boat
we left in the cove is cast up there--you can't tell. Anyway, keep your
head and don't get excited. The lake is there. It'll be lower than it
was, but all the water below the valley level will be there. Get some
people and take them to Rebels' Cave or whatever you call it and just
wait."

"Is that all I shall do?" I asked him.

"What else can you do? Just wait there; or two or three of you might
come in with lanterns to meet me."

"Suppose you're not there?" I said, all trembling.

"Well, if I'm not there, you'll know I'm with Skinny anyway, and if
anybody ever digs up our bones, they won't know who's who. Hurry up
now. Beat it. And remember you're a scout"

"But suppose--"

"You leave that to me," he said.

CHAPTER XXXII

TELLS ABOUT WHAT I DISCOVERED IN REBELS' CAVE

"All righto, so long," I heard him say.

After a few seconds I called, "Are you all right?"

And I heard him say, as if his voice was muffled and far away, "All
right, so far."

I said to myself, "Poor little kid, he isn't very heavy, that's one
thing." Then I started off.

It wasn't hard to swim across the old creek bed, because the water was
flowing easier now, and pretty soon I was hiking it up through the
mountains. Now, the way I went was through those mountains west of
Nick's Valley. And I went south toward the lake. You look at the map
and you'll see just the way I went.

The woods are pretty thick up in those mountains and a couple of times
I got rattled about which way to go. But most of the time I could look
down and see the valley and the water in the bottom of it, just like a
river. It wasn't rushing any more and I guessed that whatever happened,
the worst of it was over.

Pretty soon I came out where I could look down and see the lake all
spread out before me. It was there all right But first I didn't get the
hang of things, because Nick's Cove wasn't there at all. There was just
a kind of a river flowing from where Nick's Cove used to be, r