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CHAPTER XI UNCLE TOD’S CAMP
 For several seconds Rick and Chot stood there silent—gazing at the astonishing sight which met their eyes. For it was astonishing—to think that they should thus unexpectedly come upon the stolen auto1 for which so many officers were searching.  
Good luck had attended their whim2 to take a trolley3 ride and visit the cave. But now all interest in the cave vanished. Their whole attention was centred on the overturned auto, which lay on one side in a tangle4 of bushes and small trees.
 
“They tried to make too short a turn and upset,” was Rick’s opinion.
 
“Yes,” agreed Chot as an examination of the ground, showing where the wheels had skidded5 in soft sand and mud, bore this idea out.
 
Then a new thought came to the boys, though Rick was the first to express it.
 
“Maybe they’re there now,” he said. “Under the car.”
 
“Dead?” asked Chot in an awed6 voice.
 
“Maybe.”
 
“Let’s look.”
 
“Better not.”
 
“Why?”
 
“The coroner, or somebody like that, always has to be first to look at a dead body. That’s the law.”
 
It wasn’t, exactly, but it was near enough.
 
“But maybe some of ’em are there—hurt,” suggested Chot. “If they are we’d better—”
 
“I’m not going to get shot!” objected his chum. “They’ve got guns, it’s likely.”
 
“They can’t shoot if they’re hurt,” reasoned Chot. “Come on, let’s look.”
 
“I wish we had Ruddy here,” voiced Rick.
 
“It would be better,” agreed his chum. “But I reckon it’s all right; I don’t hear a sound, and if any of ’em was hurt we’d hear groans7.”
 
“Unless they were unconscious,” Rick said.
 
However they listened and heard not so much as a whisper coming from the overturned car. Then they plucked up courage to go nearer. Still no sound—no motion—nothing.
 
“The car isn’t broken much, as far as I can see,” said Rick in a low voice.
 
“That’s good—maybe it’ll run after its turned right side up,” spoke8 Chot.
 
They had now approached close enough to make sure that no one—certainly no wounded or injured bank robbers—were in the overturned car. There was a little pool of blood on the ground, however, which seemed to indicate that some one had been hurt. But of the men there was not a trace. And, as far as the boys could see, none of their baggage or Mr. Campbell’s was missing—at least none of the large pieces.
 
“Maybe they’re hiding in the cave,” suggested Chot.
 
“Who?”
 
“The bank robbers.”
 
“That’s so,” agreed Rick, with an uneasy glance at the dark and brush-choked entrance to the cavern9. “If Ruddy was here he could soon tell.”
 
“But if he went in they might shoot him.”
 
“That’s right. I’m glad we didn’t bring him. Say, we’d better go back and tell the sheriff about this.”
 
“Sure we had,” assented10 the other lad. Pausing only long enough to walk around the car again, and to make sure that most, if not all of their belongings11 were there, the boys hurried back through the woods, across the fields and to the place where they had alighted from the trolley car. They were lucky enough to see coming the very electric vehicle they had taken out from Fayetville.
 
“You didn’t stay long at the cave,” remarked the conductor, who was on his return trip.
 
“No, but we found something,” said Rick, and they told their story.
 
“You’d better telephone in when we get to Roseland,” suggested the trolley man, naming the nearest village. “Then you can wait and take the sheriff right to the place.”
 
It seemed sound advice and the boys followed it. The sheriff was astonished and, in a measure, disappointed at the news. Astonished because no one of his officers had thought of looking in the direction of the cave, and disappointed because it was evident that the robbers had escaped. They had probably fled when the car overturned, injuring one of them, if not more.
 
“Unless maybe they’re in the cave,” suggested Rick over the telephone.
 
“We’ll soon find that out,” said the sheriff grimly.
 
The boys waited in the Roseland store from which they had telephoned, the sheriff telling them he would call for them there and take them on to the cave. And Rick and Chot were the centre of a group of wondering and eager men and boys who gathered when news spread of the locating of the car in which the robbers had fled.
 
In due time Sheriff Hart and some of his constables12 arrived, and a small cavalcade13 followed him and his party out to the cave. There were some tense moments as officers, with ready guns, entered the cavern calling on the robbers to surrender. But there was no answer, and no shots and when lights were brought and the cave examined there was no trace of the criminals.
 
“Probably they didn&rsq............
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