CHAPTER XXVI

AT CLOSE QUARTERS

"I do wish you wouldn't talk like a silly," Teddy said with much disgust. "Who ever heard the like? How could they fly over that creek--horses and all?"

Oriole was quite embarrassed. Of course the men could not have flown over the stream, horses, and twins, and all. But it was a puzzling thing, to say the least.

"How did they do it, Teddy?" she asked.

"There must be some way across that we missed. You wait here. I will go back and look," he declared.

He wheeled his mount and quickly disappeared beyond the first screen of brush. Oriole climbed down to ease Molly's cinches and to let the pony graze. She looked all about carefully. Right here at the deep pool, at least, there was no possible ford across the stream. It was a perfect mystery how the men with the stolen twins had escaped to the other side of the river.

On this side it was plain that only a very small animal or an insect could mount the rocky wall down which the stream tumbled. There must be a way of crossing the stream, or else the kidnapers would not have come this way. The ravine and its wonderful waterfall was familiar to them at least.

Teddy was out of sight. Indeed, he was a long time gone it seemed to Oriole. At any moment she expected to see him appear riding up the other bank of the creek.

She began to wonder where he was. Had something happened to him? He could not be lost, of course--not on such a plain trail as that they had followed through this ravine. Only, so much had happened during the last few hours that she thought she might expect almost anything to occur!

While Molly gnawed the short grass in mild contentment, the girl went closer to the waterfall. Here was a broad flat stone--oh, many yards across!--which bordered the falls and was some twelve feet above the surface of the pool into which the great volume of water poured. A fine spray sprinkled this stone platform all of the time and--yes!--what was this? These marks made by tiny muddy rivulets on the stone?

"Goodness me!" gasped Oriole. "They look just like horses' hoofs. They are! What can they mean? Molly hasn't been here. Or that creature Teddy is riding. Surely----"

She raised her eyes and stared up into the dancing rainbow in the mist. Beyond it they had seen the two men and the twins riding out of sight on the opposite side of the falls.

"Goodness me!" gasped Oriole again. "It can't be!"

Yet she was positive it was. She had made a most wonderful discovery. There could be no doubt of it.

In this wonderful country she knew there must be many marvels like this she had come upon and which the outlaws evidently knew and had often taken advantage of in traveling through the hills. But to the casual observer there was no sign--absolutely none--to reveal the secret.

Quickly scrambling across the wet surface of the stone platform until she was close to the roaring stream of falling water, she pushed through a green brush-clump--bushes that were continually wet by the spray of the falls--and so got behind the curtain of water.

There was the path!

Oriole had read of the wonderful Falls Of Niagara, and she knew that there was such a path as this behind one of those great curtains of mist and water. This was a smaller wonder; but it was quite as effective. Without any doubt the two outlaws, carrying the twins with them and riding their horses, had passed behind the waterfall and so crossed to the other side of the creek.

Oriole went far enough afoot to see that the passage was perfectly feasible. The sun shone through the curtain of falling water and illuminated the shallow cavern sufficiently. She was delighted with her discovery.

Running back to the mildly startled Molly, she pulled up her cinches and bitted the pony once more. Then leaping into her saddle she headed Molly directly into the cloud of spray.

The pony shook her head and snorted; but Oriole touched her with the whip and made the animal proceed. They came safely into the shallow cavern behind the falling water. Oriole urged Molly on. The path was smooth enough and certainly there was no mistaking the right direction!

The stream was only ten yards across. Oriole and her pony came out upon a mossy rock that was marked deeply by the hoofs of the horses that had gone before. She urged Molly a little to make her climb the heights. She stood at last just where the two outlaws had stood--at the point from which little Myron had screamed to her to come and get him.

She looked back in great glee now, when she heard Teddy's sharp voice shouting:

"Oriole! Oriole Putnam! Where have you gone now?"

She "hoo-hooed" to him, and finally the boy, who had come riding back in discouragement, saw her. He halted his mount in amazement and for a minute could not utter a word.

"Oh, Teddy! can't you fly across the creek--like me?" she called to him.

"Oriole Putnam, you're a story-teller--that's what you are," he declared confidently. "You know you didn't fly over there."

"Do you think Molly waded over?" she demanded, pleased at the idea of teasing Teddy, who so often teased her.

"You'd better tell me the truth," he cried. "Hank Ridley might come back 'most any time. Then you wouldn't want to be over there alone."

"You can come right over behind the waterfall," she told him hastily, moved somewhat, perhaps, by his threat. "Just try it. It don't wet you much."

"For a nickel I'd kick myself for not guessing it," shouted Teddy, and pushed his agitated mount right in behind the bushes and so under the falling water. In five minutes he was at Oriole's side. They pushed on up the steep path which they had seen the kidnapers follow.

"That does beat all!" Teddy declared. "Ridley and his gang must know this country pretty well. Better than Harvey Langdon's punchers do, maybe. I wonder where George Belden and his bunch went. They must be up here somewhere, but not just around here I guess. Otherwise we would have heard something of them."

There was no indication of the presence of anybody at this time. Even the two outlaws and the stolen children had got so far in advance that after an hour, and after Teddy and Oriole were quite to the rim of the interior basin guarded by the Three Sisters, they came neither in sight nor sound of Ridley and his party.

"We must have lost 'em," complained the boy, stopping his horse where they would be well screened by bushes. "What do you think, Oriole?"

It was quite nice of him to confer with her, the girl felt. "Teddy considers that I have some judgment at least," she told herself.

"We may get into trouble if they see us," the girl declared. "But, oh! I do want to find Myron and Marian. What will Mr. Langdon say if we cannot tell him just where that horrid Hank Ridley has taken the twins?"

"I'd like better to come across George Belden and his men," the boy returned. "He must be somewhere in this neighborhood. That is sure. And perhaps Hank and Mudd don't know a thing about Belden's bunch. Hey! who's that?"

He pointed off to the west of their standing-place. Something--or somebody--was moving in a patch of brush. It was not a horseman, or the rider's torso would have shown plainly above the low bushes.

"Bet it's another bear," suggested Teddy Ford.

"Oh, don't!" gasped Oriole. "I don't want to see another one--so close as this."

"Ssh! Let's wait. There he is!"

But it was not a bear that appeared at the edge of the bushes. It was a man, and he pushed aside the fringe of brush carefully and leaned forward to look down into a hollow that the boy and girl farther up the rim of the basin could not observe.

"Look at that!" ejaculated Teddy, in great excitement. "It's Shaffer! Don't you see it is?"

"Oh, surely not!" murmured Oriole.

"Can't be mistaken," said the boy, with great confidence. "I'd know his mouse-colored hair and that brown coat he wears. Sure, it's Shaffer. Wonder where his horse is."

"_I_ wonder what he is looking at," said Oriole. "It must be----"

"Come on! Leave your horse here and let's slip down behind that bowlder," said Teddy quickly. "Then we can see too."

"Oh, Teddy!"

"Pooh! What you afraid of?" demanded the boy. "They will never see us in the world."

"Who else do you suppose is there?" whispered Oriole, obeying her friend's suggestion, but in no little trepidation.

"We'll find out. Shaffer knows who it is, I bet. Wonder what's happened to the horse he rode away from the ranch on."

There was nobody to answer this question. Teddy and Oriole left their steeds to graze behind the summit of the ridge and crept down the slope to the back of the big bowlder previously pointed out by the boy.

Shaffer was now out of sight. Suddenly they heard harsh voices, the pop of a pistol, and next were electrified by the screaming of Myron and Marian. There was no mistake to be made in the voices of the twins.

"Something is happening!" cried Oriole and started to run around the bowlder.

But Teddy grabbed her and held her tight.

"Say! have a bit of sense, will you?" he demanded. "Do you want to run right into trouble? Go easy. They are not hurting the kids. Myron and Marian are only frightened."

"How do you know?" demanded Oriole fiercely. "Oh! Hear that!"

They could scarcely help but hear it, for it was the clash of men's voices raised in anger. Although Teddy clung to her, Oriole insisted upon going around the big rock and into sight of the "rumpus."

Ridley and Mudd had stopped here with the stolen children, evidently to rest their steeds. At the first appearance of Shaffer, trouble had commenced. The third outlaw had evidently tried to hold his former friends up, but the weapon had been knocked out of his hand by Mudd, who was now struggling with Shaffer most desperately.

Hank Ridley was circling around and around the two fighting men, pistol in hand, evidently trying to help Mudd but afraid of shooting him if he attempted to shoot Shaffer. It was a desperate and wicked struggle, and at another time--when she was under less excitement--Oriole would have been so horror-stricken that she could not have moved.

But there by a small campfire, over which a pan of bacon was burning, were little Myron and Marian, and their danger almost wiped other thoughts from the bigger girl's mind. With a scream she ran out of cover and dashed toward the twins, who were clinging together near the outlaws' saddles.

[Illustration: WITH A SCREAM ORIOLE DASHED TOWARD THE TWINS.]

"Oh, Oriole! Oriole!" shrieked Myron, seeing her coming. "Take us away! Take us home to Brownie and papa!"