“I think it’s a good thing for you boys that I went wandering off alone this morning,” Will argued.

“You didn’t go wandering off alone!” Thede cut in.  “You had Pierre with you?  Poor Pierre!” he continued.  “I’m sorry for him!  I suppose we’ll have to make some kind of a grave and give him decent burial!”

“Sure, we’ll do that!” agreed Will.  “But what is puzzling me just now is this,” the boy went on, “how are we going to get out of this hole with that Antoine watching our every move?  He’ll shoot us down just as quick as he shot Pierre if he gets a chance.”

The boys took short trips out of the cavern in quest of their enemy, but were unable to discover any traces of him other than the tracks in the snow.  These led toward the chain of caverns which the boys had such good reason to remember.

“I think we’d better make for the camp,” Will suggested in a moment.

“Why not move over to the cabin?” asked Thede.  “It will be much more comfortable there.”

“That’s a good idea, too,” Will agreed, “except that we’d have to move all our camp equipage and provisions.”

“Well, why not?” asked the boy.  “We can rig up a drag and draw the stuff over in two or three loads.”

“We can if Antoine isn’t shooting at us every minute!” Sandy cut in.

“I don’t believe Antoine will trouble us,” Thede answered.  “If he has the Little Brass God, he’ll probably make off with it.  He’s got to go somewhere to get his injured wrist tended to, and my opinion is that he’ll simply disappear from this neck of the woods until he makes up his mind that we have gone back to Chicago.”

“I hope he won’t go very far,” Will mused.

“If he does, we’ll lose the Little Brass God!” Sandy argued.

“I don’t agree with Thede,” Will said directly.  “If the man has a secure hiding place in the hills, he’ll manage to treat the injured wrist himself and remain hidden until he thinks we have left the country.”

“It’s all a guess, anyway,” Sandy exclaimed, “and, whatever takes place, I vote for moving our truck over to the cabin and settling down there!  We don’t want to go back to Chicago as soon as we find the Little Brass God, do we?”

“We certainly do not!” shouted Tommy, sticking his head into the narrow doorway.  “I haven’t had a chance to catch all the fish I want yet!”

“Well, we may as well move over to the cabin if that’s the general opinion,” agreed Will.  “I must admit that those tents look pretty thin to me.  I didn’t expect snow to fall so early.”

“Besides,” Sandy urged, “if we live in the cabin, we’ll be perfectly safe from attack.  It would take dynamite to make a hole through those great logs, and the door itself is about a foot thick!”

“All right,” Will replied.  “If we find anything left when we get back to our camping place, we’ll move it over to the cabin!”

“The first thing to move will be George,” laughed Sandy.