"Frank, what do you make of it?"

"Harry, I don't know what to think."

"Ain't nuffin fer it but ter keep on hopin' fer the best, as the
feller said when they had a rope around his neck fer horse-stealing
and was about to string him up."

The three--Frank and Harry Chester and Ben Stubbs--were standing
round the charred remains of their once lively, well-equipped
camp--where they had arrived that morning at daybreak after a
tiresome night spent circling about in the moonlight trying to
locate it--and now the reason why they had failed to see the white
tents was fully apparent by their blackened sites.

"Billy and Lathrop have been carried off!" It was Harry who spoke.

"Beyond a doubt. I thought at first that the raid must have been
made by cannibals, but cannibals do not carry rifles, as a rule, and
look here." Frank stooped and picked up half-a-dozen cartridges of
the kind used by the Arab slave-traders.

"You know there were no shells like that in our party," he went on,
"but I can see by the collection of empty shells in the place where
the tent stood that Billy and Lathrop must have put up a hot
defense."

"Frank, do you--you don't think, do you--" Harry burst out.