ad gone too far
in his desire to provoke the big fellow.

For there would be no one to ask questions if the boy should never
leave the hills alive. Unless the Black Bears were within striking
distance, no one would ever know what had become of him. He looked and
listened again for some signs of his friends, but the slope behind told
him nothing.

CHAPTER XIX.

WHAT WAS FOUND UNDERGROUND.

While Fremont was clambering down the eastern slope, studying the
renegade Englishman whenever opportunity offered, and puzzling over the
source of the fellow's information concerning the Cameron building and
the Tolford estate papers, Ned Nestor and his companions were preparing
to visit the interior of the strange shelter-place in which they found
themselves.

The outer chamber, which, for convenience they marked "Chamber A" on
the rough map they afterward made, was 30x40 feet in size, with the
eastern side running parallel with the almost perpendicular face of
rock which shot upward from the shelf which has before been alluded to.
The opening faced directly east, and from it one could look miles over
the desert of sand lying between the foot of the range and the Rio
Grande del Norte, something like a hundred miles away.

To the north and south of this main chamber the boys found niches in
the rock, evidently hewn there by man hundreds of years before. The
rock was very hard here, and it seemed that work had ceased for that
reason.

On the west side of the chamber there were two openings, perhaps four
feet by six, each leading into a chamber 20x30 feet in size. Before
entering these rooms, which held an odor of dampness and decay, the
recently arrived Black Bears produced electric flashlights.

"We looked up Old Mexico," Harry Stevens said, turning on the flame,
"and knew we'd be nosing around in caves and tunnels before we got back
to God's country, so we brought our glims along with us."

"Well, don't burn them all at once," advised Nestor. "We shall need
them for several days, probably, and there are no shops in the next
block where dry batteries can be bought. Leave one out and put the
rest away."

"We have a few extra batteries," said Harry. "We looked out for that."

"We shall doubtless need all you have, no matter how economically they
are used," Nestor said. "Let me take the one you have, and I'll go on
an exploring expedition into the south chamber."

"Me for the exploring expedition too!" cried Ha