smaller outcrop of rock which stood sharply about fifteen feet above the level of the terrace—­with its gaunt, dead limbs in the air at a low angle.  To Johnny’s boyish fancy it seemed so easily balanced on the rock that but for its imprisoned root it would have made a capital see-saw.  This he felt must be looked to hereafter.  But here his attention was arrested by something more alarming.  His quick ear, attuned like an animal’s to all woodland sounds, detected the crackling of underwood in the distance.  His equally sharp eye saw the figures of two men approaching.  But as he recognized the features of one of them he drew back with a beating heart, a hushed breath, and hurriedly hid himself in the shadow.  For he had seen that figure once before—­flying before the sheriff and an armed posse—­and had never forgotten it!  It was the figure of Spanish Pete, a notorious desperado and sluice robber!

Finding he had been unobserved, the boy took courage, and his small faculties became actively alive.  The two men came on together cautiously, and at a little distance the second man, whom Johnny did not know, parted from his companion and began to loiter up and down, looking around as if acting as a sentinel for the desperado, who advanced directly to the fallen tree.  Suddenly the sentinel uttered an exclamation, and Spanish Pete paused.  The sentinel was examining the ground near the heap of debris.

“What’s up?” growled the desperado.

“Foot tracks!  Weren’t here before.  And fresh ones, too.”

Johnny’s heart sank.  It was where he had just passed.

Spanish Pete hurriedly joined his companion.

“Foot tracks be ——!” he said scornfully.  “What fool would be crawlin’ round here barefooted?  It’s a young b’ar!”

Johnny knew the footprints were his own.  Yet he recognized the truth of the resemblance; it was uncomplimentary, but he felt relieved.  The desperado came forward, and to the boy’s surprise began to climb the small ridge of outcrop until he reached the fallen tree.  Johnny saw that he was carrying a heavy stone.  “What’s the blamed fool goin’ to do?” he said to himself; the man’s evident ignorance regarding footprints had lessened the boy’s awe of him.  But the stranger’s next essay took Johnny’s breath away.  Standing on the fallen tree trunk at its axis on the outcrop, he began to rock it gently.  To Johnny’s surprise it began to move.  The upper end descended slowly, lifting the root in the excavation at the lower end, and with it a mass of rock, and revealing a cavern behind large enough to admit a man.  Johnny gasped.  The desperado coolly deposited the heavy stone on the tree beyond its axis on the rock, so that it would keep the tree in position, leaped from the tree to the rock, and quickly descended, at which he was joined by the other man, who was carrying two heavy chamois-leather bags.  They both proceeded to the opening thus miraculously disclosed, and disappeared in it.