me in search of them were
their return delayed too long. This was not desirable. It might mean
the undoing of the entire party unless Tad and Ned succeeded in
rounding up their enemy first.

Ned, in his excitement, had a mishap. While creeping along the upper
rim of a galley he stepped on a round stone. Ned fell crashing into
a heap of rotting limbs and went floundering from there to the bottom
of the incline, making a racket that must have been heard clear out on
the plain.

The lad got up, his clothing torn, his face scratched, very much
chagrined over his blundering fall.

"I guess I'm not so much of a scout as I thought I was," he muttered.
"Chunky could have done no worse and for a blundering idiot he's
always held the cup up to the present time. I'm glad no one saw me
make such an exhibition of myself. But what if that fellow heard me?
No, he couldn't. He is too far away."

In this Ned was wrong. The "man" was not so far away as the Pony Rider
Boy thought. The fellow, while watching for another opportunity to
shoot, had caught the distant sound of crashing twigs. It might have
been a falling tree, it might have been an animal. At any rate it put
the fellow instantly on his guard. Lowering his rifle he began skulking
in the direction of the racket.

By this time Ned was walking ruefully down the galley looking for a
convenient trail up the side to the ridge. Not that he could not have
made the ascent anywhere, but that he did not wish to raise any more
disturbance than be already had done. At last, finding what seemed
to him to be a path, Ned began climbing the side of the galley. Had
the boy first taken a survey of the ground at the top of the rise, he
might possibly have made a discovery, and then again he might not.
Crouched behind a rock was a man. The fellow was fingering his
rifle suggestively. Twice he raised it to a level with his eyes and
drew a bead on the advancing form of Ned Rector, and as many times
lowered it.

The watcher observed that Ned carried no rifle, only a revolver
slapping against his thigh in its holster as the boy stumbled on up
the mountain side. The mountaineer evidently changed his mind about
shooting, for he changed ends with the gun and sat waiting. A few
moments later Ned stepped up beside the rock where he stood listening
and looking about him. The Pony Rider Boy looked everywhere except
in the right place.

Suddenly there was a crackling of twigs behi