s along the bottom at the edge of
the small stream of water which flowed toward the south. The water had
cut a passage under a ledge at the south, and now flowed eastward,
toward the plain.

Following steadily on, now stooping under natural bridges in the rock,
now wading through cuts which the water covered, and which must have
been roaring torrents during time of storm, the boys finally came to a
little shelf looking east from which the renegade and some of his
companions could plainly be seen.

"Fremont is not so very far away now," Jack said, "and we ought to
swarm down there and take him back with us. We ought to take the big
lobster Jimmie seems to have on his mind back with us, too!" he added.

Nestor shook his head, for, much as he desired to hasten the hour of
Fremont's release, he saw that an attempt at rescue now would be
dangerous. It was certain that the outlaws, not suspecting that they
had been trailed over the mountain by the tireless Boy Scouts, would be
off guard at night.

"Of course we want to capture that big lobster," Jimmie said. "We want
to know why he was so anxious for Nestor's society!"

"I think that question can easily be answered now," Nestor said, but he
did not answer it.

Leaving the view of the spot where Fremont was a captive reluctantly,
the boys went back to the gold chamber by the series of canyons by
which they had left it. It was not an easy journey, for there were
places where strength and skill were required, but at last they drew
themselves up the chute by means of the rope, after which they again
fell to investigating the provision boxes which the newcomers had
brought in.

By the time they had finished a second tolerably satisfactory repast,
it began to grow dark, although the sun was still an hour from setting.
Black masses of clouds were forming, and now and then flashes of
lightning, darting from cloud to cloud, and from cloud-mass to earth,
cut the gathering darkness.

Then a drenching rain-storm came on, and Nestor believed that the time
for the attack on the captors of his friend had arrived. In the
darkness and storm the outlaws would not be expecting danger. The wind
almost flung the boys from their feet when they came to open shelves of
rock on their way to the plain below, but they kept steadily on their
course.

CHAPTER XXI.

WOLVES BECOMING DANGEROUS.

On the last slope of the mountain, where the sand of the desert crept
up to the ridge