I didn't know you set such great store by showing the old thing; but since I see you do, why of course I'm game to hold out to the finish.

Hope you don't want to get the blooming dog stuffed, and keep him mounted in your den at home."

"Well, that'd be the limit!" exclaimed Bristles, laughing at the idea.

"I feel right now that he's going to visit me lots of times in my dreams, with all that double row of white teeth showing, and his red lips drawn back! Ugh! I'll not forget in a hurry how he looked, I tell you, Colon.

And didn't he take the punishment I heaped on him, though? I used up every ounce of strength I had in slinging my club. You notice that I'm toting that along, don't you?"

"Oh! that's the racket, is it? A bow of blue ribbon tied to the club, and hang it on the wall of your room at home? Well, Bristles, I don't blame you much, because he was an ugly customer. If he'd ever gotten you down, it'd been tough on you."

"Here, let up on that style of talk, will you, Colon? It makes me have a cold chill run up and down my spinal column. Let's talk about something more cheerful. What d'ye think about this shortcut through the woods?

Fred says it's going to save a lot, and that nearly every fellow will like as not take to it. A mile of this goes against three by the road."

"So long as every contestant knows the ground, it might pay to take the cut-off," Colon remarked, "but I noticed some swampy ground that I'd hate to get lost in. If any runner fails to show up at the tape, they'll have to send out a searching party to look for him through this section."

"That'll be his lookout, then," observed Bristles, calmly. "Everybody shinny on his own side. Preparation is part of the battle. The fellow who is too lazy to go over the course in advance will have to take big chances, that's all. He won't deserve to win."

"This is certainly a dreary place, all right," the tall runner went on to say, as he looked to the right, and then to the left. "Why, I didn't know there was such a desolate stretch of woodland within twenty miles of Riverport. Some of it's good farming land too, if part is boggy, and even that would make a cranberry marsh, if anyone wanted to try it out."

"It's all second growth timber, though," called back Fred, who was still just a dozen paces in the lead, and pushing his way through brush that often entirely concealed the ground.

"Sure it is," Bristles went on to say. "Long ago the original timber was cut down, and sent to the sawmills. Listen to the frogs croaking over that way; must be a pond somewhere around."

"I was going to ask you if you'd run across any snakes yet?" Colon inquired, with considerable show of interest, because, as well known among his friends, the tall runner had always felt a decided antipathy for all crawling things, and would never handle even an inoffensive garter-snake; indeed, slimy greenbacked frogs he abominated, claiming that they had the same clammy feeling as snakes.

"Why, yes, a couple whipped across the trail back there," Bristles admitted.

"Not rattlers, I hope?" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Colon, coming to a sudden stop, as he turned an apprehensive look upon his companion.

"No," Bristles told him, with a scornful inflection in his voice, for he did not share Colon's antipathy toward crawling reptiles, and could not understand how any fellow could be so foolish as to shiver at sight of a mere wriggling object. "Fred says it's too early for rattlers to show out of their dens. One was a fair-sized black snake, and the other might have been an adder; he was short and stumpy, and had a flat head."

"Just as poisonous as anything that crawls," said Colon, with a shudder, and an involuntary hasty look around him. As a rule, he was far from being nervous, and yet when a stick that had bent under Fred's weight suddenly sprang back into shape again, the tall runner gave a low cry of alarm, and even dropped the leg of the dog that he had been clinging to so st.u.r.dily all that distance.

Not liking to be joked about his fears, Colon made out that a thorn had jabbed him in the leg, and bending down he started to rubbing vigorously at his ankle. Bristles, apparently, was aware of the true state of affairs, for he grinned as he waited for the other to a.s.sist him once more.

"These thorns do stick you right smart when they get a chance at a bare shin, for a fact, Colon," he went on to observe, grimly, "but so long as they don't draw blood, the damage's not apt to amount to much, I reckon.

There's Fred disappeared from sight, and we'll have to hurry if we want to catch up with him before we strike that road, which I calculate can't be a great way off."

It happened that they were pa.s.sing over some rather rough country just then, with a number of dark-looking gullies intersecting their course.

In places it was even necessary for them to drop down into these and then climb up on the opposite side. This took time, but the boys fancied they must be close to the road they had been aiming to reach.

"See anything of Fred, yet?" asked Bristles. "You're such a tall fellow you c'n spy a heap farther than me."

Colon looked, and then shook his head.

"He's nowhere around, as far as I c'n see," he remarked, and dropping his share of the burden, Colon sprang back in alarm, as a voice seemed to come up out of the very earth at their feet, saying:

"Keep back there, you fellows, or you'll be tumbling down on top of me!"

"h.e.l.lo! there, Fred, where under the sun are you?" demanded Bristles, looking around him in sheer amazement.

"I've fallen into some sort of cave here, that's all!" came back in a m.u.f.fled voice.

CHAPTER VIII

THE TELL-TALE PIN

Colon and Bristles stood there, and looked at each other in dismay, upon hearing Fred say that he had met with such a strange misfortune.

"Well, if that doesn't beat my time!" the latter exclaimed. "And to think that while you and I talked back there, our chum was lying down in some old black hole. What if he's broken his leg, or even sprained an ankle,---Riverport will miss a good man in this Marathon race, believe me!"

"Let's see if we can find the hole where Fred slipped down," suggested Colon.

"And be careful we don't go the same way, too," added Bristles, drily.

At that they started to move carefully forward, closely examining every foot of the way as they went. In a short time Colon uttered a cry.

"Found it, have you?" demanded Bristles, with a disappointed grunt, for he had hoped to be the lucky one himself.

"Look there where that root sticks up!" the other called out, pointing as he explained. "Seems to me there might be a gap of some sort. Let's creep a little closer and find out. Yes, that's the hole, and no mistake, Bristles. And Fred---he must have slipped down so fast he just couldn't grab hold of anything. If he did, it gave way, and went down along with him."

They accordingly crept forward, and began to stare down through the opening.

"Why, what's this I see?" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Bristles. "Somebody's got a light working down there, Colon!"

"It's our chum, I reckon," the tall boy told him, after another look.

"What, Fred?" persisted Bristles. "But whatever would he be striking a match for, I want to know?"

"To look around, I should say," Colon informed him, and the statement seemed so simple that it apparently convinced Bristles on the spot, for he hastened to remark:

"Well, that sure would be just like Fred now, to think of finding out what sort of a coop he'd dropped into, the first thing. h.e.l.lo! down there!"

"h.e.l.lo! yourself, Bristles!" came back the cheery answer.

"First of all, tell us if you got hurt any, Fred!" called Bristles, who could not get the notion out of his head that the other may have been seriously injured.

"Why, no, nothing to mention," came the ready answer. "A few more little scratches, it might be, but then they don't count. Kind of knocked the breath out of my body at first, and took me a little while to recover, but no damage done, boys."

"What are you doing with the light, Fred?" Colon wanted to know.

"I only wanted to see what sort of a place this is, that's all," Fred told him, as his match expired, and the darkness came again.

"And did you find out?" continued Bristles, eagerly, possibly his mind beginning to wrestle with all sorts of strange ideas concerning hidden treasure vaults, and, mysterious hiding-places where counterfeiters carried on their illegal trade.

"It seems to be only an ordinary cave, like others we've run across,"

Fred told them. "If you felt like coming down, I think it would be easy enough."