"I think that you've hit it about right, Con," answered Mr. Randolph. "But, now that there is no hope of getting any more gold out of that cave, I am getting powerful anxious to make a start for home with what we have got. Let's go back to the Big Tree at once and get agoing homeward as soon as we can." "Hurrah for home!" yelled Thure, starting for the opening out of Crooked Arm Gulch. "I'd rather see home now than another Cave of Gold." In a few minutes all were back in the camp under the Big Tree; and preparations for the start homeward were begun at once. In three hours everything was ready for the journey. The gold, there was fifty bags of it, each weighing about one hundred pounds, was packed on the fifteen horses they had secured from the robbers. Mrs. Dickson was given one of the other horses to ride, and the food and the camp supplies were packed on the remaining five horses. The twenty-two prisoners were now all gathered in a bunch under the Big Tree, and the hands of each man strongly tied behind his back. Then Mr. Conroyal stepped out in front of them. "You cowardly pack of scoundrels," he said, "if we could, we would gladly take you to where we could deliver you up to the justice you so richly deserve; but, under existing circumstances, that is impossible; and so we have decided to leave you here, bound as you now are, without weapons of any kind, but with food enough to last you three days, which ought to be enough to keep you until you can get to one of the mining-camps. Doubtless, by working real hard, you can manage to get the hands of one of you untied in course of the next two or three hours, and then he can soon untie the hands of the others, and you can start for one of the mining-camps as soon as you please. But," Mr. Conroyal spoke slowly, so that every man could understand every word that he uttered, "do not, if you value your lives, follow our trail. We will shoot, and shoot to kill, on sight. Now, that is all I have to say to you, except," and he grinned joyously, "to thank you for bringing us those fifteen horses and for your help in getting out the gold. I do not know what we would have done without the horses and without your help. Hope this will learn you to give up trying to steal gold and start you to digging for it," and he turned and led the little company down the canyon, bound, at last, for home. CHAPTER XXVII HOME Ten days later than the events just recorded in the last chapter, Iola Conroyal and Ruth Randolph sat swinging in a hammock, stretched under the broad porch that shaded the front of the Conroyal house.