ALMOST BETRAYED BY A SNEEZE
Tad awakened with a start.
His first impression was that he smelled smoke, and for the moment
he believed himself back in camp. A movement convinced him of his
error. A jagged point of rock had cut into his flesh while he
slept. He almost cried out with the pain of it, and as he moved a
little to shift his body from it, the wound hurt worse than ever.
The lad was still surrounded by an impenetrable darkness. It all
came back to him--but standing out stronger than all the rest was
the fact that he was lost.
"Wonder how long I've slept," he muttered. "Seems as if I had been
here a year. Lucky I awoke or I'd been stuck fast on that rock, for
good and all. Whew! B-r-r-r! I think it's going to snow. Thought it
was going to rain just before I went to sleep. Wonder if they have
snow up here in the summer time. Have almost everything else,"
continued the lad, muttering to himself, half under his breath.
Slowly rising he shook himself vigorously and rubbed his palms
together to get his circulation stirred up.
"Hello, what's that? I remember now, I smelled smoke or thought I
did."
Tad sniffed the chill air suspiciously.
"It is smoke," he decided. "Maybe I've set the woods on fire with my
matches. Guess I'll climb down and investigate."
He started to move down the side of the ledge when it occurred to
him that perhaps it would be better to investigate from where he
was; he did not know what danger he might be running into if he were
to climb down without first having made sure that it was perfectly
safe to do so. Just what he might meet with he did not know. But he
felt an uneasy sense of impending danger.
"Often feel that way when I first wake up, especially if I've been
eating pie the night before," he confided to himself, in order to
urge his courage back to life.
Bending forward he peered from side to side, but was unable to find
a single trace of light, anywhere about him. If it were a fire it
must be some distance away, he concluded.
"If it were some distance away, I wouldn't smell it. The wind has
died down. No, the fire that smoke comes from is right near by me,"
he whispered.
The sense of human habitation near him caused his pulses to beat
more rapidly. The question that remained for him to decide, was who
was it that had started the fire?
Tad Butler determined to find out if possible, and at once.
He crept cautiously to the right, feeling his way along the ledge,
not being sure how near he was to the edge. He found it more
suddenly than he had expected, and narrowly missed falling over head
first.
"Whew! That was a close call," he muttered. "I must be more
careful."
There was no sign of either smoke or fire below him, as he observed
after getting his balance again. He drew back cautiously and worked
his way to the side that he had been facing, yet with no better
result than before.
There yet remained two sides to be investigated--the one he had
climbed up and the other that lay to the left of him. Tad chose the
latter as the most likely to give him the information he
sought. However, he found that the edge lay some distance away. The
table of rock was much wider than he had imagined, when he first
ascended to it.
The way was rough. Once the lad's foot slipped into a crevice. In
seeking to withdraw it he gave the ankle a wrench that caused him to
settle down on the rocks with a half moan of pain. His shoe had
become wedged in between the rocks so that he had difficulty in
withdrawing it at all, and the injured ankle gave him a great deal
of pain as he struggled to release himself.
"Guess I'll have to take off my shoe. Hope I haven't sprained my
ankle. I'll be in a fine mess if I have," he grumbled.
The ankle gave him considerable trouble; but he rubbed it all of ten
minutes, and he found that he could endure his shoe again. He was
full of curiosity as well as anxiety to learn the cause of the
smoke, which, by this time, seemed to be coming his way in greater
volume.
After having relaced the shoe and leggin, Tad started on again, this
time on all fours, not trusting himself to try to walk, feeling his
way ahead of him with his hands, which he considered the safer way
to do.
"There's somebody down there," he whispered, after a long interval
of slow creeping over the rocks. "I wonder who it is? Perhaps they
are looking for me. I'll give them a surprise if they are."
The surprise, however, was to be Tad's.
At last he reached the edge of the little butte. Slowly stretching
his neck and lying flat on his stomach, he peered over.
A cloud of black smoke rolled up into his face, causing the lad to
withdraw hastily.
"Aka-c-h-e-w," sneezed Tad, burying his face in his hands.
"Whew, what a smudge! I'll bet they heard that sneeze."
"What's that?" demanded a gruff voice below. "Sounded like somebody
sneezing."
"No, it's an owl," replied another. "I've heard that kind
before. Sometimes you'd think it was a fellow snoring."
"Must be funny kind of a bird," grunted the first speaker.
"He's right. That's exactly what I am," growled Tad, who had plainly
overheard their conversation. Yet he was thankful that the men below
had not realized the truth. Tad was quite willing to be mistaken for
a bird under the circumstances.
After making sure that the men were not going to investigate the
sound, the boy crept again toward the edge, working to the right a
little further this time, so that the smoke might not smite him full
in the face as had been the case before.
There were four of them--strangers. The boy observed that they were
dressed like cowboys, broad brimmed hats, blue shirts and all. From
the belt of each was suspended a holster from which protruded the
butt of a heavy revolver.
"Cowboys," he breathed. "At least they ought to be and I hope they
are nothing else."
The lad's attention was fixed particularly on one of the party. He
was all of six feet tall, powerfully built, his swarthy face covered
with a scraggly growth of red beard, and with a face of a peculiarly
sinister appearance.
"When do they expect the herd?" asked the first speaker.
"Be here the day after tomorrer I reckon," answered the man with the
red beard.
"How many?"
"They say there's five thousand sheep in the herd, but it's more'n
likely there'll be ten when they git here."
"Huh!" grunted the other.
"There'll be less when we git through with them."
"You bet."
"Boss Simms will be mad. He'll be ripping, when we clean him out."
Two of the men rose at the big fellow's direction and stalked off
into the bushes to attend to their ponies, which the lad could hear
stirring restlessly, but could not see.
"Simms!" breathed Tad. "What does this mean? Those men are up to
some mischief. I know it. I must find out what it is they are
planning to do."
Tad learned a few moments later, but in his attempts to overhear
what the plans of these strange men were, he nearly lost his own
life.