WHAT WAS MISSING
“Gone!”
This was the one word which burst from Dave’s lips as he searched one
pocket after another in rapid succession. Then he arose to his feet, to
hurry up and down the trail in the vicinity where the encounter with
Jasniff had occurred. But though he looked everywhere, not a trace of
the documents, the letters, or his pocketbook could be found.
An examination showed that his coat was torn in several places and that
the side of one of the pockets had likewise been rent. But whether this
damage had been caused by the fight or when he had rolled down over the
rocks, he could not determine.
“I guess I got pretty well mussed up in the fight, and the fall down the
rocks finished the job,” he muttered to himself.
He was much disheartened, and felt bitter against Nick Jasniff. Whether
the rascal had picked up the articles lost and made off with them was,
however, a question.
“If I lost them up here on the trail he probably took them,” Dave
reasoned. “But if they fell out of my pockets when I rolled down the
rocks and over the cliff, they must be scattered somewhere between here
and the place where I landed in the bushes.”
Dave felt much perplexed, not knowing whether it would be better to try
to find Jasniff or to make a search in the vicinity where he had had the
fall.
“I suppose it would be sheer nonsense to try to follow Jasniff on foot
if he went off on my horse,” the young civil engineer reasoned. “I might
as well take a look down below and make sure that I didn’t drop those
things when I fell.”
With his hurt shoulder and lame ankle, it was almost as much of a task
to get down the rocks as it had been to climb up. As well as he was
able, he took the same course he had followed in the fall, and he kept
his eyes wide open for the things he had lost. But five minutes of
slipping and sliding brought him to the top of the little cliff without
seeing anything but dirt, rocks, and bushes. Then he had to make a wide
detour to get to the bottom of the cliff.
“I suppose it’s a wild-goose chase, and I’ll have my work for my pains,”
he grumbled. “Oh, rats! Why did I have to fall in with Jasniff on this
trip? I wish that fellow was at the North Pole or down among the
Hottentots, or somewhere where he couldn’t bother me!”
Dave began to search around in the vicinity of the spot where he had
fallen. He was almost ready to give up in despair when his eye caught
sight of a white-looking object some distance below. Eagerly he climbed
down to the place where the object lay, and the next moment set up a cry
of joy.
“Hurrah! Here are Mr. Obray’s documents!” he exclaimed. “I hope they are
all right.”
A hasty inspection convinced him that the legal-looking envelope and its
contents were intact. Having inspected them carefully, he placed the
packet inside of his shirt.
“I won’t take any more chances with it,” he told himself. “Somebody will
have to rip my clothing off to get that envelope away.”
With the envelope safe in his possession once more, Dave felt
exceedingly light-hearted. But the letter from Jessie, as well as the
communication from Uncle Dunston, and the pocketbook with the forty odd
dollars in it, were still missing, and he spent some time looking for
those things.
“It doesn’t matter so much about the letters, even though I hate to part
with the one from Jessie,” he reasoned. “But I’d like to set my eyes on
that pocketbook with the forty-two or forty-three dollars it held.”
But our hero’s success had come to an end with the finding of the
envelope to be delivered at Orella; and although he searched around for
a quarter of an hour longer, nothing of any value came to sight. Then,
with a deep sigh, he pulled himself up once more to the trail, and set
off on a hunt for his horse.
“Jasniff was headed in the opposite direction, and maybe he didn’t go
after Sport,” Dave argued to himself. “Anyhow, I’ve got to go that way,
even if I have to journey on foot.”
Painfully our hero limped along, for the climbing up and down on the
rocks had done the lame ankle no good. He had had to loosen his shoe,
for the ankle had swollen not a little.
“If I could only bathe it it wouldn’t be so bad,” he thought.
But there was no water at hand, and the small quantity he carried in a
flask for drinking purposes was too precious to be used on the injured
limb.
He had covered several yards when his lame ankle gave him such a twinge
that he had to sit down to give it a rest.
“I don’t know what I’m going to do if I can’t find that horse,” he
thought bitterly.
He was sitting and nursing the hurt ankle and looking over the landscape
in the valley below him, when something on one of the bushes less than
fifty feet away caught his eye.
“I wonder what that can be,” he mused. “It doesn’t look like a bird’s
nest. It looks more like an old shoe. I wonder——Can it be my
pocketbook?”
The last thought was so electrifying that Dave leaped to his feet, and,
regardless of the painful ankle, walked over to the edge of the trail.
Here he could see the object quite plainly, and he lost no time in
crawling down to the bushes and obtaining it.
It was indeed his pocketbook, but wide open and empty. Even the few
cards and slips of paper it had contained were missing.
“This proves one thing,” he reasoned bitterly. “Jasniff picked that
pocketbook up where we had the fight, and he came this way while he was
emptying it, then he threw it away.”
Dave was also sure of another thing. The pocketbook and the two letters
had been in the same pocket, and he felt certain that Nick Jasniff had
also confiscated the two communications.
“Now the question is, if he came this way, did he get Sport?” Dave
mused. “If he did, then it’s good-bye to the letters, the money and the
horse.”
Placing the empty wallet in his pocket, Dave sat down and rested his
lame ankle. He counted the loose change in his trousers’ pocket and
found he had eighty-five cents. Then he limped on once more around
another bend in the trail.
Here a sight filled him with satisfaction. At this point the rocks came
to an end and there was a fairly good bit of pasture-land, and here
stood Sport, feeding away as if nothing out of the ordinary had
happened.
“Good old Sport!” cried Dave, going up to the animal and patting him
affectionately. “I’m mighty glad you didn’t run any farther, and doubly
glad Nick Jasniff didn’t get you. Now, old boy, we’ll be on our way and
try to make up for lost time;” and in a moment more our hero was in the
saddle and galloping off in the direction of Orella.
Dave surmised that Nick Jasniff had come in that direction looking for
the horse, but without finding Sport. At the same time, the rascal had
rifled the pocketbook and then thrown it in the bushes. Then, thinking
the horse had gone a much greater distance, Jasniff had retraced his
steps and continued on his way in the direction of the construction
camp.
“But he can’t be bound for the camp, for Mr. Obray warned him to keep
away,” thought our hero. “It must be that he is headed either for some
of the mining camps or ranches, or the railroad station.”
Our hero felt that it would be next to useless for him to go to the
Double Eight Ranch, where Nick Jasniff was employed, and accuse him of
the theft. The fellow would probably deny everything—even the meeting on
the road. And as there had been no witnesses to the transaction, there
the case would have to rest.
“Just the same, when I get the chance, I’ll let the manager of the
Double Eight Ranch know what sort of fellow Jasniff is,” Dave said to
himself. “Maybe that crowd over there won’t want a prison bird around
any more than we wanted him at the construction camp.”
Our hero had been right in regard to finding the pocketbook and letters.
After Dave had disappeared over the edge of the cliff below the trail,
Nick Jasniff had looked around to find his hat, which had fallen off in
the struggle. As he picked this up he had noticed the pocketbook and the
two letters.
“Maybe there’s something in that pocketbook worth keeping,” he had
muttered to himself, as he tried to stop the flow of blood from his
bruised nose. “And I guess I’m entitled to anything I can get from Dave
Porter. I hope he broke every bone in his body by that fall.”
He waited for a minute to see if Dave would reappear, and then hurried
along the trail, thinking he could find and mount our hero’s horse. He
quickly transferred the forty-three dollars he found in the wallet to
his own pocket, and then threw the pocketbook away in the spot where
Dave picked it up.
“I guess it’s no use to look any farther,” Jasniff had muttered to
himself on failing to locate the horse. “Gee! I’m glad I struck this
forty-three dollars! That amount with the thirty I had before will see
me a long distance on my way.”
And thereupon he had hurried back past the spot where the encounter had
taken place, and then along the trail to where there was a fork—one
branch leading down to the construction camp, and the other off in the
direction of some mines and the nearest railroad station.
Although our hero did not know it, Jasniff had had another quarrel
earlier in the day. A miner operating near the Double Eight Ranch had
the night before fallen in with several of the men employed by the
Mentor Construction Company, and from them had learned the particulars
concerning the fellow who had gotten out of prison.
This news had been carried to James Dackley, the manager of the Double
Eight, and Dackley, who was naturally a hot-headed man, had become
furious over the thought of being so deceived by Jasniff.
“I only took him on because I thought he was a tenderfoot and was hard
up for a job,” Dackley had growled. “He told such a straight story that
I swallowed it, hook, line, and sinker. I don’t want such a fellow
around here any more than they want him over to the railroad camp. Just
have Nolan send him to me, and I’ll soon send him about his business.”
Thereupon Nick Jasniff had been summoned from the bunk-house to the main
building on the Double Eight Ranch and been closely questioned by James
Dackley. He had denied everything, but the ranch manager had refused
almost to listen to him.
“I’m going to investigate this,” said Dackley, “and if the story is
true, the sooner you get out the better I’ll be pleased.”
Nick Jasniff had well understood that the truth would come out in the
near future; and knowing how passionate James Dackley could become on
occasion, he had lost no time in packing his few belongings and asking
for his pay. This had been given to him, and he had thereupon set out on
his journey toward the railroad station on foot—Dackley refusing to give
him the loan of a horse.
Nick Jasniff had come to the conclusion that it would be best for him to
quit the neighborhood. He had thirty dollars in his pocket, and this
added to the forty-three taken from Dave’s pocketbook made quite a sum.
“There’s no use of my staying here in the West,” he reasoned. “There are
far more chances in the East for a fellow like me. Maybe I’ll find some
of the fellows I used to know out there, and we can pull off some stunts
worth while.”
With several miles placed between him and the place where he had had the
encounter with Dave, Nick Jasniff sat down to rest and at the same time
look over the letters he had picked up. There was a cynical sneer on his
face as he read the communication from Jessie to Dave.
“It’s enough to make a fellow sick to think such a rich girl as that
should take to a fellow like Dave Porter,” he murmured to himself.
“Wouldn’t I like to put a spoke in that fellow’s wheel! I wonder if I
couldn’t do something to come between Porter and the Wadsworths? I owe
old man Wadsworth something for sending me to prison.”
Then Nick Jasniff turned to the letter written by Dunston Porter. The
beginning of this did not interest him greatly, but he read with
interest what Dave’s uncle had written concerning the gypsies who had
camped out on the outskirts of Crumville.
“Got into a row with a couple of gypsies, eh?” he mused. “I reckon
that’s something worth remembering. Maybe those fellows wouldn’t mind
joining me in some kind of a game against the Wadsworths. Maybe we could
put one over and make a lot of money out of it. Anyway, it’s something
worth thinking about;” and thereupon Nick Jasniff grew very thoughtful
as he proceeded on his way to the railroad station.