vows belongs to his mother alone, and nothing on earth would
make him betray."

"And they left him there, did they?" growled Sheriff Bob, frowning in
a way to indicate his opinion of the said Kracker.

"Just what they did. He saw us come into the valley, but thought we
might only be some more of the same kind of wolves, wanting to torture
a poor boy. But when he saw Giraffe, here, making letters with his
fire-stick, something told Aleck we must be Boy Scouts. So, finding
some wood on the ledge, he managed to make a little fire in a crack
that ran into the rock; and with a brand from this he started to call,
repeating that one word over and over again--'help'!"

"This here is some interesting to me, son," remarked the big sheriff,
as Allan paused to get his breath, for he was talking so fast and so
eagerly that he had almost exhausted himself. "And so, after you
learned where he was, and how he came to be thar, I reckon now you
boys started to climb up and rescue the other--how?"

"That's what we did, sir," broke in Giraffe, eagerly. "Four of us,
counting the guide, managed to climb up the mountain, and with a rope
we carried, hooked Aleck up off that ledge the prettiest you ever saw,
that's what we did," with a defiant look toward old Artemus, who was
sniffing through all this talk, just as though he refused to believe a
word of it.

"And that's the way we came to have him in our camp, sir," Allan went
on to say. "We heard his story, and believed it, too. He's got a
mother, and a lot of little sisters, who look to him to carry out the
work his father started. But every one who ever hears a word about
that hidden mine Jerry Rawson once found, seems to be just crazy to
take it away from his widow. She has hardly a single friend to trust.
Even her relatives plot to beat her out of this valuable mining
property, and try all sorts of things, in hopes of getting hold of the
secret. And now you know just where we stand, Mr. Sheriff. As scouts
we must stay friends of Aleck. He _was_ here, just as you know; but
he's gone away, and none of us know where to. Thad took him off during
the night, and all he said was we might expect to see him again when
he showed up. So you can't pump any information out of us, you see."

"And even if we knew anything, we wouldn't tell," asserted Giraffe,
belligerently, feeling that the honor of a scout was in question right
then.

The sheriff looked from one to another of those four boyish