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at us. I’m sure he started that tree rolling. And what’s more, I think the man was Ben Rall, who threatened to hurt you, Nancy.”
    “If you’re right,” the girl sleuth replied, “I hope Pop and the boys capture him.”
    In a little while the other riders returned. The girls were sorry to see that the cowboy was not with them. Pop reported that they had not seen the lone rider.
    “But I did!” Bess spoke up. “He tried to kill Nancy, George, and me!”
    “What!” Pop, Chuck, and Range exclaimed together.
    “That’s right,” George added. She told them what had happened. “You can see the evidence some distance from here.” She pointed toward the tree that had rolled down the slope and onto the open area.
    Pop commented, “That’s a fine twist. Here I tell you to stay in this spot so you’ll be safe, and you were the ones who were nearly killed while the boys and I didn’t even get a glimpse of the culprit!”
    Bess nodded. “If that was Ben Rall, he has already started to carry out his threat to get even with Nancy!”
    The three men frowned. Pop said, “From now on we must take double precautions.”
    The group had lunch and rested a while, then set off again. It was almost dark when they reached the spot where Roger Paine’s plane had landed. It was not there now. Had it been there and gone again? They all examined the ground but could not answer the question.
    Later in the evening, they brought out their sleeping bags. When they were ready to climb into them, Chuck said, “I think we should set up guard. I’ll take the first watch.”
    Pop Hamilton agreed and asked Chuck to awaken him three hours later.
    Range Cooper grinned. “That makes me last, and my watch will run into breakfast time. I promise you all a great feast!”
    The three girls offered to take turns watching, also, but the others wouldn’t hear of it. They slept soundly and awoke to the aroma of sizzling bacon and hot biscuits.
    “How heavenly!” Bess exclaimed, raising her arms to stretch. “Nothing ever smelled so good!”
    The morning meal was as tasty as it smelled. Range, complimented by the girls, seemed embarrassed, and a red flush came over his sun-tanned face.
    “It was nothing,” he declared.
    As soon as they had finished and tidied their little camp, Nancy was eager to start her search for a clue that would identify the sky phantom. She walked in ever-widening circles in order not to miss an inch of ground. An hour later, to her delight, she found something exciting. Nancy called to the other searchers to come and see what she had picked up.
    “What did you find?” Pop asked.
    “It’s a silver medal with a chain attached to it,” she said. “And look, the initials on it are R.P.!”
    The others in the group were amazed. George asked, “You believe the R.P. stands for Roger Paine?”
    “I don’t know,” Nancy replied. “On the back of the medal is a series of strange marks.”
    Her friends rushed over to look at them.
    Bess asked, “Do you suppose these marks are a clue that Roger left behind on purpose? Do you think that if we can figure out what they mean, we can find him?”

CHAPTER VII
    Happy Discovery
    THE RIDERS gathered around Nancy. She held up the silver medal, showing first the side containing the large engraved initials.
    “Those must be Roger Paine’s,” George said. “It would be too much of a coincidence if they belonged to someone else.”
    Chuck asked to see what was on the back of the medal. Nancy turned it over.
    The cowboy laughed. “Looks like Greek to me,” he said.
    Each one glanced at the strange markings, but no one could make any sense out of them.
    Range asked, “If Roger Paine was abducted and left this as a clue, why didn’t he put something on it that we can read?”
    All this time Nancy had been staring intently at the back of the silver medal and the carefully made grooves on it.
    Finally she said, “These markings are machine-cut, and he wouldn’t have had any