icks to a man's ribs," wrapped it
in heavy paper and slipped the package into the bosom of his shirt. He
completed his equipment with a fresh bag of tobacco and many matches.
He loaded his rifle, added a plentiful supply of ammunition to his
outfit from the box on the shelf. Then he went outside to be alone, to
frown at the black wall of the night, to think, to await the dawn.

"I'm coming to you, Judith girl," he whispered over and over to
himself. "Somehow."

Dawn trembled over the mountain-tops, grew pale rose and warm pink and
glorious red in the eastern sky, and Bud Lee, throwing down his coiled
rope which had been put into service a dozen times during the night,
said shortly:

"Here we camp, boys. I'll leave you my fried bacon, Tommy, and take
the raw with me. You're not even to light a fire. And you're to stick
here until I come for you."

They had travelled deeper and deeper into the fastnesses of the
mountains, mounting higher and higher until now, in a nest of crags and
cliffs, on a flank of Devil's Mountain, they could look far to the
westward and catch brief glimpses of the river from Blue Lake slipping
out of the shadows. They had gone a way which Lee knew intimately,
travelling a trail which brought them again and again under broken
cliffs, where they must use hands and feet manfully, and now and then
make service of a loop of rope cast up over an outjutting crag.

"They'll never follow us here, Tommy," he said confidently. "If they
do, you've got the drop on them and you've got a rifle. You know what
to do, Tommy, old man."

"I know, Bud," said Tommy, his eyes shining. For never before had Bud
Lee called him that--"old man."

Long ago the gag had been removed from Hampton's mouth. Long ago,
consequently, Hampton had said his say, had made his promises. When he
got out of this--glory to be! wouldn't he square the deal, though! Did
Lee know what kidnapping was? That there were such things as laws,
such places as prisons?

"Here," said Lee not unkindly, "I'll loosen the rope about your wrists.
That's all the chances we're going to take with you. Come, be a sport,
my boy. You're the right sort inside; just as soon as this fracas is
over, when you know that we were right and that all this is a put-up
job on you, your friend Trevors playing you for a sucker and getting
Miss Sanford out of the way, you'll say we were right and I know it."

"That so?" snapped Hampton. "You just star