Page:Ralph on the Railroad.djvu/630

62 Certainly he had got mixed up in cautiously trailing the enemy at a distance. He wondered if the two men he was now following belonged to Ike Slump's crowd.

"I must assume they do," ruminated Ralph, "at least for the present. They are bound for some point in the woods, of course, and I shall soon know their destination."

The two men proceeded for over a mile. They commenced an ascent where the cliffs lining the railroad cut began. The place was thick with underbrush and quite rocky in places, wild and desolate in the extreme, and the path they pursued so tortuous and winding that Ralph at length lost sight of them.

"Where have they disappeared to?" he asked himself, bending his ear, keeping a sharp lookout, and with difficulty penetrating the worst jungle of bushes and stunted trees he had yet encountered. "I hear voices."

These guided Ralph, and he followed their indication. At last he came to a halt near an open space, where the men he was following had stopped.

"Here we are, Ames," were the first distinct words that Ralph heard spoken.

"Why, one of these men must be the farmer that Zeph worked for," decided Ralph.