Page:Hendryx--Connie Morgan with the Mounted.djvu/103

Rh sat down to a cold breakfast. He got out his police map and searched for Henderson's Creek. It was not there. Connie was in a dilemma—Should he summon McKeever? Or, should he go it alone?

"I'll go it alone, anyway, for a while," he decided. "If I shoot now, other ears besides Dan's would hear it, and it would be all off, for this trip."

Folding his map, he shouldered his pack and struck off along the rock wall. Suddenly he halted. So engrossed had he become with his problem that he had failed to notice that his feet were following a well-defined trail! He proceeded more cautiously, now, pausing frequently to listen. Only silence. The trail bent sharply to the wall and the boy found himself before a narrow crevice, or crack, in the solid rock. The trail ended at the crevice whose floor slanted upward at a gradient so steep as to be a veritable stairway. Only for a second, Connie hesitated, and then plunged into the opening.

Up, up, he climbed, following the steep windings of the crack. The click of his boot-heels sounded like thunder in his ears.