ap be
found? Or, what if the two men, becoming desperate, should ask that they
be searched, to see if anything that belonged to the miner could be
found in their possession, and the buckskin bag and the gold nugget and
the skin map should all be discovered in their place of concealment
under Thure's left shoulder?

When the two horns of a dilemma are both equally long and sharp, how,
then, can the peril be avoided?

Indeed, the longer and the closer Thure and Bud looked at their
situation, the more dreadful and impossible of remedy it appeared. How
could they prove their innocence, when they did not have a single
witness to appear in their defense? How could their youth and
inexperience, friendless and alone, hope to combat successfully with the
cunning and the experience of these two unprincipled men, who would stop
at nothing to accomplish their ends? But, they were not the kind of boys
to give up a fight for life, as long as they could strike back; and the
more difficult their situation appeared, the more grimly determined they
became to win out somehow, or, at least, to die fighting.

"Not a word of the skin map and the Cave of Gold," hastily warned Thure
in a whisper to Bud, as the alcalde, having completed the tale of the
jury, again turned to them. "Tell everything just as it happened, but
that. The telling of that would not help us a bit; and, if it were known
that we had a map and a gold nugget that had belonged to the miner, it
would look suspicious and might hurt us a lot; and we don't want to give
away the Cave of Gold, not if we can help it."

"Right," whispered back Bud. "It's got to be our word against the word
of those two cowardly villains, I reckon," and he glared furiously in
the direction of the two men. "We've just got to beat them some way,"
and his young face grew grim and stern.

By this time the jurymen had all seated themselves comfortably on the
ground on both sides of the alcalde, and were ready to hear the
testimony.

"You may step forward and be sworn," and the alcalde's eyes signaled out
the big man with a broken nose.

The man stepped up in front of the alcalde, who sat on a stump, with a
barrel standing on end in front of him and an old worn Bible lying on
top of the barrel.

"Hold up your right hand," commanded the alcalde, his keen eyes fixing
themselves sternly on the red, brutal face; "and repeat the oath after
me."

The man's right hand went up with a sort of spasmodic j