“More than I know.  All I could see was paws.  The air was full of them and they seemed to come from all directions at once.”

This explanation brought laughter to Larry and Horace, which ceased abruptly, however, as from somewhere on the mountains there suddenly rang out a low wail, more like the howl of a coyote than anything else, yet with a certain difference that even the chums were able to distinguish.

“Whatever that is, I don’t care to meet it,” exclaimed Horace.  “Let’s go back.  We’ve still got two rifles.  If we stick to the plains till we join father we can get along all right.”

“Suppose we don’t meet your father, what then?” returned Larry.

“Always looking for more trouble, as if we didn’t have enough already,” chided Tom.  “Of course we’ll meet him.  Anyhow, this is no place to argue about it.  If you and Horace can’t protect me, I’ll take both your rifles and watch over the two of you.”

There was a suggestion of mockery in Tom’s voice, but taking it good naturedly, Larry replied: 

“Oh, no you won’t.  You can’t throw your gun away every time you get scared and then take ours from us.  You just get in between Horace and me.  Horace, you lead because you know how to follow a trail better, and I’ll keep off the bears and raiders,” he added with a smile.

The movements of the boys, however, were more rapid than their words, and they were traveling the trail once more ere Larry’s joking allusion to the loss of the rifle and the protection he would afford.

So long as their way lay among the rocks they followed the trail with little difficulty, but when they entered the woods their troubles began in earnest.

None too self-possessed in the dark, even when going about the ranch, when he entered the inky darkness caused by the maze of boughs and foliage, Horace lost his head completely, and it did not take the comrades long to realize they had wandered from the trail.

“Better let me take the lead, Horace; I’m taller,” said Larry, at the same time giving his brother a poke In the ribs as a warning not to object.

“Well, you’ll have to be a giraffe to see your way over the tops of these trees,” chuckled Tom.

Their plight was too serious to admit of jest, however, and after wandering for half an hour, stumbling over dead limbs and running into trees and branches, they halted in despair.

“I remember Si told us back home that when a man’s lost he generally travels in a circle,” said Tom.

“So he did, and he said It was usually to the left, because a man takes a longer step with his right foot,” added Larry.

“That may help when you know which is the right and which is the left of the way you have been going, but here we’ve turned round to talk, so we don’t even know that much,” interposed Horace.

“That’s a fact,” admitted the elder of the chums reluctantly as he realized that by facing one another they had lost all sense of direction.  “It’s a good thing you thought of it, Horace, or we might have got ourselves into a worse mess than we’re in now,”