“Me, too!” Sandy cut in.  “I’m shy a breakfast myself!”

“And I’m so hungry that I could eat snowballs!” Thede said, with a grin.  “I don’t think I ever was so hungry!”

“Why don’t you go outside and take a shot at that half-breed?” Tommy asked, looking reproachfully at Will.

“Did he get your guns away from you?” asked the boy.

“You bet he did!” replied Tommy.

“How did he do it?”

“He asked us to lay them aside while we crawled through a crack in the rock, and then grabbed them.  Oh, he’s a foxy old fellow, that!”

“Well, we can’t get out if we stand here talking all day,” Sandy ventured.  “The longer we stay, the hungrier we’ll get!”

“What I’d like to know,” Will suggested, “is this:  Why did he do it?  What spite has he against us?”

“If you leave it to me,” Thede replied, “the Little Brass God has something to do with it!  I don’t know whether Pierre has possession of the ugly little beast, or whether he is trying to get possession of it, but I believe he has a notion that we’re trying to get bold of it.”

“Well, that’s a good guess,” grinned Tommy.

During all this conversation the voice of the half-breed had been frequently heard, alternately cursing and coaxing the lads to enter the outer chamber where he could talk with them.

“What do you want?” Will asked finally.

“Come here!” was the answer.

Tommy stepped half-way through the opening and flashed his searchlight into the apartment beyond.

“That is better!” shouted Pierre,

“So that’s what you want?” demanded Tommy.  “You want light to shoot us by!”

“Send the other boy out!” demanded the half-breed.  “Send out the one I brought here!”

“He wants you, Will,” Tommy said.

As the boy was about to step into the opening, Thede caught him by the arm and drew him back.

“Just you wait a minute,” he said.

The lad placed a sliver of rock in Will’s hat and held it beyond the opening, at the same time letting the rays of the searchlight fall full upon it.

“I know that half-breed better than you do,” Thede said, as he pushed the hat out further and further.

When the hat was about as far out as the boy could send it without risking his own hands, a rifle shot rang through the cavern and the bullet cut its way through the exposed hat.

“Don’t you see?” Thede asked.  “He knows you have a gun, and he figured that you’d fall into this chamber, and that we wouldn’t dare reach over for it.  He’s a foxy old reprobate!”

“What next?” demanded Will.

“You just wait a minute!” Thede advised.  “I think I know a way out!  If we just could get in behind that half-breed and chuck him into the prison he prepared for us, it would be a mighty fine joke on him!”

CHAPTER XI