"I'm glad I'm not fat," said Tom. "If I was I'd be winded sure."
"I think we'd better keep quiet as soon as we reach the vicinity of the holes," cautioned Dick.
Half an hour of hard climbing brought the boys to the vicinity where they had first fallen into the holes leading to the cave, and then they advanced cautiously and in almost absolute silence. They stopped to listen several times, but heard nothing but the calls of some birds and the trickling of water over the rocks.
Arriving at the top of the hole from where the dirt and stones had been thrown, they gazed around with interest. Where the soil was soft they could see the footprints of shoes much larger than those they themselves wore.
"Here is his trail, going away," said Dick, after a close examination.
"There is your tin box!" cried Sam, pointing to the object, still dangling from a distant tree.
"Wait till I see what is in it," answered his big brother. "It won't take but a minute or two."
Feeling his way through the brushwood, Dick approached the dangling tin box. It was a small affair and now hung open. He felt certain in his mind that when he had seen it before it had been closed.
The box proved to be empty and Dick was, somehow, disappointed. He glanced on the ground and saw a number of bits of paper, some old looking and some new. He picked up some of the bits and saw they had been written on in pencil, but the words or parts of words were undecipherable.
"Well, what do you make of it?" questioned Sam, as he and Tom came up.
"I think I know what this is," answered Dick.
"A sort of a private post-office. Somebody was in the habit of leaving messages here, and Dangler or somebody else got the messages from time to time."
"I believe you are right," said Tom, after he, too, had looked over some of the bits of paper strewn around. "Here is the word 'box' and here is the word 'Saturday.'"
"Yes, and here are the words, 'fast freight,'" added Sam. "This was nothing more than a letter box for the freight thieves."
"But why was it placed here?" questioned Dick. "It's a very out-of-the-way place and hard to get to."
"Maybe somebody had to come this way," answered Tom. "See, here is something of a trail."
"Yes, and here are those same big footprints!" exclaimed Sam. "For all we know they may lead to some house or hut on the mountainside."