in his helpless wrath.

Pedro, feeling safe from pursuit, with such a plug in the only approach
to his sanctuary, now for the first time disclosed his knowledge of
Mexican. Sanchez's astonishment was as huge as his attitude was
undignified, and if words could have seared, Pedro would have been well
scorched. But the boy only told him of an item he had read in the paper,
where a fat man got stuck in a cave and had to fast for three days before
his girth had diminished sufficiently that he could be extricated.

With that, Pedro bade them a fond farewell, and departed along a
labyrinthian way they could not follow. That some one was on their trail
he suspected from the revolver shot, and the fire bugs would be nicely
trapped.

Now the Ranger reasoned that the lion's den would not be far from the
outer world, and in that he was right, as he proved by following it to
its end. The last lap of the way he had to wriggle along on hands and
knees, but he could see the glow of the setting sun in a circle of light
at the end, and in a very few minutes he had poked his head and shoulders
beneath an overhanging bowlder on a rock ledge. It was the Southern slope
of the spur, and after a little reconnoitering he discovered that it was
the self-same spur on which fire-fighting headquarters had been
established. The cave, then, pierced clear through the ridge, and he had
been exactly all day in following its windings.

Hiking wearily up the slope to the ridge, he could see the glow of the
cook-fire perhaps a mile away, while down in the canyon on the other side
the fire still glowed in red embers where it continued to devour the
blackened tree trunks, though it was under far better control than it had
been the day before.

Rosa's solicitude at his haggard face and tattered, mud stained clothing
restored him wonderfully. (After all, there were compensations in the
scheme of things.)

"We were just about to start a search party in there," said Norris. "I
would have before, if it hadn't been for the fire. But where are the
boys?" He paled in alarm.

"I don't know," Radcliffe dragged from white lips.

"Oh!" gasped Rosa, her eyes filling with tears which she promptly hid by
turning her back.

Without a word Long Lester gathered up the paraphernalia the Ranger now
saw he had stacked and ready on the ground, and fitted it into a
back-pack. There was food, rope, and candles, another tube of carbide for
Radcliffe's lamp, a box of matc