confession of his near whereabouts. (This time he laughed
outright at thought of Sanchez the Stout still dangling his helpless legs
when the Ranger found him. The sound echoed and reechoed weirdly.)

This experience had done much for Pedro's untried courage. For after all,
is it not the unknown that terrifies us rather than the actual calamity
to be faced? Another thing that helped the Spanish boy to be reasonably
philosophical,--probably the biggest factor, after all,--was Nature's
medicine, his extreme physical fatigue. Thrusting his hat through a
narrow crevice so that it would be seen and recognized by any one coming
that way, he stretched himself out flat on his back on a bit of smooth,
dry rock, thriftily extinguished the remaining bit of torch, and was
instantly asleep.

He awoke, he knew not how much later,--but he felt refreshed,--to hear
the sound of voices echoing and reechoing faintly, far down the
passageway. Fumbling frantically for a match, he yelled for help with all
the power of his trained voice. (And the sound echoed back and forth.) At
first Norris and the boys could not tell from which direction it came.
Then Long Lester, who was in advance, saw the hat, and it but remained to
remove the bowlder.

Now it was that they had use for their ingenuity, for their combined
efforts did not suffice to budge the fallen rock. The cavern in which
Pedro had become immured was off a lateral passageway leading,--if he had
taken the turn to the right instead of the one to the left,--to the very
cave mouth by which the rescue party had reentered; for Long Lester had
found, not far from the waterway through which the two boys had
come,--but on a higher level,--some scratches on the rocks and a heel
print in the scanty soil that told the old mountaineer as plain as words
that that was the way Radcliffe had come. Every heel in the party was
different, one having Hungarian hob-nails set in a semi-circle, another a
solid design in the same nails, a third the larger hobs, a fourth none.
He knew the differences in size and the ones that were worn deeper on the
inside of the foot. To him a footprint was as good as a signature, and
better, for like an Indian, a "hill billy" can often read how fast you
were going from a group of two or three footprints, how tired you were,
and much besides. This knowledge had served them in good stead. He now
hurried back to the cave mouth with Ace, found a down log that would
serve as a le