"WHAT’S the matter?" Glen demanded.
"It's Joe and Larry," Danny said, his lips scarcely forming the words. "They...they ran away!"
"But why?"
Hurriedly the young woodsman told him how the F.C.C. agents had been able to locate the sending set by means of the Adcock devices. He told him how Clarence had taken the story from Larry and hinted that the whole gang might be arrested.
"We've got to find them!" Danny went on excitedly. "Larry wasn't dressed warm enough to go up into the mountains. He...he'll freeze if he gets up where it's cold!"
"W-w-what are we going to do?" Glen asked.
"We've got to get home and tell Aunt Lydia and Uncle Claude," the young woodsman answered.
"We've got to get somebody to hunt for them!"
Together the two boys dashed down the wide street to the place where Danny's aunt and uncle lived.
"Aunt Lydia!" Danny called as they threw open the front door and burst into the living room. There was no answer.
"I...I don't think there's anyone at home," Glen panted.
And then Danny spied the note on the kitchen table.
"Dear boys," he read. "I've gone to Denver with Dad. We'll be back late tonight or early tomorrow."
"What are we going to do now?" Glen asked, his round face white and serious.
"I don't know," Danny answered hesitantly. "Do you have any idea where the guys might have gone?"
"There's an old scout cabin up on Iron Mountain," Glen replied after a moment or two. "It isn't used very much, but I know Larry used to hike up there once in a while."
"That could be just the place!" Danny exclaimed. "We've got to go up there and see!"
"You...you mean right now?" Glen echoed. "Without even going to school this afternoon?"
"We couldn't wait until after school!" Danny retorted. "Larry's desperate! There's no telling what might happen if we wait! I'll go and call the principal while you call your mother."
Quickly Danny and Glen wolfed down their lunch, got into heavy coats, and hurried up the old Iron Mountain road on their bikes.
"We can ride out to where the road ends," Glen explained. "Then we'll have to take the trail up the mountain on foot."
Danny nodded. "O God," he prayed, "be with Larry and Joe. Guide them and keep them from harm. O Lord, just...just help them to use their heads and...and decide to come back. In Jesus' name. Amen."
They rode for five or six miles on their bikes until the road got steeper and steeper and finally ended altogether at the base of the rocky, forbidding mountain.
"We must have gained an hour or so on them," Glen said as they hid their bikes behind a big clump of brush and stood for a moment catching their breath.
"Yes," the young woodsman replied, "but they've still got a good three or four hours' head start on us."
Glen took a few steps up the trail. "But we'll find them," he said. "We've just got to!"
"If Larry had only taken Jesus as his Saviour this morning," Danny continued. "He was so close to it that he couldn't have gotten any closer without giving his heart to Christ. If he had, this wouldn't have happened."
His companion nodded in agreement. "Look!" he exclaimed an instant later, pointing to a pair of footprints in the soft dirt at the edge of the trail. "They've gone this way, all right!"
Quickly Danny ran forward and dropped to his knees to examine the footprints. "It's theirs, all right," he said a moment later. "And from the looks of these footprints it hasn't been too long since they went by here."
"Maybe we're not so far behind them after all!" Glen said hopefully.
Danny wasn't used to mountain climbing, but he was able to keep up with Glen as they made their way upward. They didn't talk much. It took breath to talk—breath they needed in the long, steep climb.
Nevertheless, Danny was praying with every step.
Every now and then they stopped to rest, throwing themselves on the ground and breathing in long, rasping gasps.
It was cold outside and getting colder, but they were sweating beneath their coats. The clouds that had been lurking about the mountaintop when they first started out had inched past them now and almost covered the sky. Now and then a few flakes of snow fell, and the wind was rising steadily. Up in the Angle those signs would mean a storm.
"H-how much farther is it?"
"Oh, we're halfway or a little better," Glen said. "But the going gets harder when we work over on the north face of the mountain."
It was going to storm. The clouds had closed in about them, completely blotting out the sun, and on the slopes above they could see that snow was already falling.
"Maybe we'd better go back!" Glen said almost fearfully.
"But we can't!" Danny exclaimed. "Larry and Joe are up there somewhere!"
"We'd better hurry, then!"
They climbed even faster than they had, pushing themselves until their arms and legs ached desperately.
It had looked as though it would start snowing any minute, but strangely enough it held off although it kept growing darker continually.
It was Glen who spotted the wreckage of the plane below them, a mile or so around the mountain to the east.
"Look," he said, pointing at the wreckage. "There's the plane that crashed last night."
Danny shuddered.
"You don't suppose they'd go over there and take a look at it, do you?" Glen asked.
"I don't think they'd ever want to see it," Danny replied.
After five or ten minutes of climbing, Glen stopped once more.
"Take it easy for the next hundred yards or so," he said. "We've got to cross the face of this cliff, and it's two or three hundred feet straight down."
Danny gulped hard.
Slowly, cautiously he edged his way along the narrow, crumbling ledge, his fingers digging into holes in the rough granite, and his feet feeling for good, solid footing. He dared not look down. After what seemed to be an hour or two he finally got across the cliff to the safety of the boulders and scrub pine.
"Whew!" he exclaimed. "Hope I don't have to do that again, ever."
It wasn't far to the cabin, and they hurried now, clambering up the steep slope and around the boulders until at last they reached it.
"There!" Glen exclaimed when at last they saw it through the trees.
There was no sign of anyone around the little log cabin. There was no sign that anyone had been there recently.
"O God, help us to find them!" Danny prayed as they threw open the door.
But the little room was empty!