ind you when I come back, and so that you can
follow the wagon when it comes out of the woods again if I am not on
hand."

"You think they are going to move some of their plunder in the
wagon?"

"Exactly," replied the young fireman.

"Well, so do I. They won't get far with it, though, if I am after
them," boasted Zeph. "Wish I had a detective star and some weapons."

"The safest way to do is to follow them until they get near a town or
settlement, and then go for assistance and arrest them," advised
Ralph. "Now, then, Zeph, make no false moves."

"No, I will follow your orders strictly," pledged the farmer boy.

The basket was lifted into the wagon by Ike, who, with Mort, led the
horse through the intricate timber and brushwood. Progress was
difficult and they proceeded slowly. As soon as it was safe to do so,
Ralph left Zeph. The two men had taken up the trail of the wagon,
guarding its rear so that Joe could not escape.

Ralph kept sight of them for half-an-hour and was led deeper and
deeper into the woods. These lined the railroad cut, and he wondered
that the gang of robbers had dared to camp so near to the recent scene
of their thieving operations.

At last the young fireman was following only two men, for he could no
longer see the wagon.

"Perhaps they have left Ike and Bemis to go ahead with the wagon and
they are reaching the camp by a short cut," reflected Ralph. "Why,
no," he suddenly exclaimed, as the men turned aside to take a new
path. "These are not the same men at all who were with the wagon. I am
off the trail, I am following some one else."

Ralph made this discovery with some surprise. Certainly he had got
mixed up in cautiously trailing the enemy at a distance. He wondered
if the two men he was now following belonged to Ike Slump's crowd.

"I must assume they do," ruminated Ralph, "at least for the present.
They are bound for some point in the woods, of course, and I shall
soon know their destination."

The two men proceeded for over a mile. They commenced an ascent where
the cliffs lining the railroad cut began. The place was thick with
underbrush and quite rocky in places, wild and desolate in the
extreme, and the path they pursued so tortuous and winding that Ralph
at length lost sight of them.

"Where have they disappeared to?" he asked himself, bending his ear,
keeping a sharp lookout, and with difficulty penetrating the worst
jungle of bushes and stunted trees he had yet encoun