last as
if he rather had doubts if Chip were worth looking after. But, with the
Auto Boys on the trail he felt safe as far as the money went, provided
they found Murky, and the spoil Murky would be apt to have with him.

CHAPTER XIV

TRAILING THE STOLEN MONEY

Several miles away from the wagon trail that led from Staretta to the
now destroyed Longknives' clubhouse, two boys were groping along in the
falling twilight in a discouraged manner.

Around them stretched seemingly endless vistas of burned and blackened
forest, stark, leafless, forbidding. Under foot was a sooty, miry quagmire
of rain-soaked soil, naturally low, swampy in places, and now all but
impassable. The rain had subsided into a misty drizzle, soft, fine, yet
penetrating.

"Gee but I'm tired, Chip!" said the younger of the two, lifting with
effort one foot after the other from the deep mud underneath.

"Well, she _is_ gettin' rather bad," replied the other. "Won't be much
moon tonight, I reckon."

"D'you suppose the other boys will start out such a day as this?"

"Dunno; hard to tell. But we've come a right smart ways, Paul, and so far
as I kin see we're gettin' further and further into these big woods."

"But we've never lost old Murky's trail. Have we, now?"

"Nope! Dark as it is, I kin make it out. You know when we started out we
noticed that one of his shoes or boots had a prong on one side of the
heel. Well, here she is--see?"

And Chip Slider pointed to a deep impression made apparently by a big
shoe-nail or some other peculiarity which the lads had noted earlier when
the light was better. Paul grunted a tired assent.

"Where do you reckon we are, anyhow?"

Chip was staring at a high bulge ahead as if some huge rock or boulder
protruded upward from the nearly level ground.

"I dunno. There's something ahead that looks like we might find a shelter.
Come on, Paul."

The two plodded on, one carrying the lone blanket and the other the small
store of eatables that remained after their last inroad upon it. When
they were nearly up to this unusual obstruction there came a sparkle of
light that hit the damp air momentarily, then went out. It seemed to Chip,
who had the keenest eyes of the two, as if it might have been the flare
of a match.

The boys halted at once and stood staring, listening, perplexed and yet
most curious. Finally they heard a snapping of twigs, and then came
another flare and still another. Nothing else could