“By the last hoptoad that was chased out of Ireland!” Dig vowed. “Have
we chased these snoozers all this way for nothing?”
“Let’s search ’em again,” insisted Chet grimly. “They took those deeds
out of my pocket and they have them somewhere.”
“Don’t you boys maul me all over no more,” said Tony complainingly. “I
tell ye, ye won’t find nothin’ on me—and ye tickle. I never could stand
being tickled. Lemme up,” and the rough fellow grinned up into their
faces in a most knowing way.
“No,” said Chet slowly. “We’ll not let you up yet. I think you’d look
pretty going back to Silver Run with a rope around you.”
“Back to the Run?” questioned Dig, puzzled.
“No use our going on to Grub Stake if we can’t find the deeds,” said
Chet sternly. “And what do you suppose the boys at father’s mine would
do to this scamp if they got hold of him again?”
“Aw—say!” growled Tony. “You’re too fresh. I don’t want to go back to
the mine.”
“Then where are those papers?” Chet demanded earnestly.
“Don’t ask me about ’em. I never had ’em,” declared the man.
“But you’ve seen them? Your partner had them? And he has them yet, I
believe,” cried Chet, turning sharply on the other villain.
“Find out!” snarled that individual.
“I’ll find out before I let you free,” promised the lad.
“Say!” exclaimed Tony. “Don’t hold me for Steve’s sins. I took your
coffee-pot and truck and you got ’em back. Now let up on a feller.”
“Why should I?” Chet demanded seriously. “I’ve got to find the deeds.”
“I ain’t got ’em—honest!” declared Tony.
“I wouldn’t take your word for it,” growled Dig, in the background.
“Well! you might as well believe me,” almost whined the big fellow. “I
don’t want you boys to keep me tied up this a-way.”
“Shut up, you sniveler!” commanded the man called Steve, from the other
side of the fire.
“Say! you can shut up yourself,” cried Tony. “I knowed you’d get us into
trouble. These are two powerful smart boys and we’d oughtn’t to have
treated ’em so mean. Give ’em the papers back, Steve.”
“Shut your mouth!” yelled the other man. “I haven’t the papers.”
“Well, you had ’em,” grumbled Tony.
“We’ll search him again—to the skin,” said Chet bitterly. “Come on,
Dig. Hold your gun on him,” and he approached Steve.
But he had no idea that the man did have the papers. He had already
searched the scoundrel too thoroughly to have missed any hiding place
for the deeds his father had entrusted to him. Chet felt very bad
indeed.
“I tell you boys—and you might as well understand me,” said the man,
Steve, threateningly, “I haven’t got those deeds. I’ve dropped ’em
somewhere and I don’t know where. Back where we camped at noon, maybe.
That’s straight.”
“Let’s look around the camp here,” proposed Dig, knowing how unhappy his
chum felt, and wishing to help.
He threw an armful of light wood on the fire and the blaze sprang up
immediately, illuminating the clearing more fully. Already Dig had
collected their possessions into a heap. He found every article they had
missed.
Searching the camp did no good, however. As Dig said, they did not leave
a leaf unturned. But the deeds were not to be found. Their size and the
stiffness of the legal paper on which they were written would have made
it impossible for Steve to have hidden the documents in any small space.
Supposing he had doubted the honesty of Tony (which he well might) Steve
may have thought of hiding the papers before he went to sleep. But
where?
The boys almost tore his saddle to pieces looking for the documents.
They pulled off his boots and made sure the papers were not in his
socks. When they got through their final search they were convinced that
the deeds were not on either man or anywhere about the camp.
“What do you think, Chet?” asked Dig, in a low tone. “Is the fellow
telling the truth?”
“I am inclined to believe he is,” Chet returned, with a sigh. “It’s a
tough proposition. I feel dreadfully bad about it. What will father
say?”
“But, Chet! He can’t blame us.”
“He’ll blame me. And why shouldn’t he? He entrusted me with the deeds
and I had no business to lose them.”
“Well!” said Dig slowly. “What shall we do now? Going to leave these
fellows tied up for the wolves to eat?”
“Hey!” shouted Tony. “Don’t you do that. There are wolves about.”
Chet picked up Tony’s old rifle and noted its make and calibre. Then he
looked at the long barreled pistol they had taken away from the other
man. There were no other weapons in the possession of the two
scoundrels.
“We’ll untie them, I reckon, and let them up,” Chet said slowly.
“Nothing else to do that I can see. But I want you fellows to
understand,” he added, facing the men, “that we both carry rifles that
will outshoot this old piece of junk,” and he tapped Tony’s gun, “by
about an eighth of a mile. Don’t come fooling around our camp again, for
if you do we’ll shoot,” and he said it in a tone that carried
conviction.
Neither of the men said a word as the boys carefully removed the strong
ropes. Then Dig picked up their possessions, and carried them to a
distance yet not so far away that the light of the campfire could not be
seen. Later he brought the horses and the rifles.
When the rifles were in their hands Chet agreed to leave the scoundrels
alone. But he advised the men to keep a bright fire going for the rest
of the night.
“If we see it die down at all,” Chet threatened grimly, “whichever of us
is awake will be very apt to send a bullet or two over here to wake you
up. Come on, Dig,” and he walked backwards out of the rascals’ camp.
The boys cooked and ate a hearty supper—and they needed it. Chet sat so
that he could see into the rascals’ camp and he kept the heavy rifle
beside him. Of course, had the two men begun stirring around, he would
only have fired into the tree-tops to scare them; but as he told Digby,
a firm stand was necessary.
“And where they go, _we_ go,” Chet Havens declared. “They have lost the
deeds, without much doubt. But they’ll go to look for them. That Steve
will remember where he dropped them.”
“Do you mean to tag around after those chaps?” gasped his chum.
“Yes, I do. That is my determination,” said Chet, nodding vigorously.
“It is our best chance to find the papers, whether they have dropped
them, or whether Steve was lying about it and has got them hidden away
somewhere.”
“He said he might have dropped them back where they camped,” Dig said
reflectively.
“Well, they haven’t camped but once since they robbed us, and that’s
sure. That was for their noon bite. Where that was we have no idea. We
just have to watch them!”
Both boys were excited by the adventure of the evening and Chet declared
that he could not sleep at all; so he took the first watch. He heard
nothing of the two men but he noted that their fire was kept burning
brightly.
Dig was not unfaithful to his duty during the last of the night, either;
but he awoke Chet about dawn by shaking him vigorously.
“Hi! come alive!” urged the slangy youngster in a hoarse whisper.
“What’s the matter?” demanded Chet, sitting up.
“Those fellows are getting ready to move out. If you want to follow
them, we have got to get a move on.”
Dig already had the coffee over the fire and the meat ready for
broiling. It seemed that the other camp had been astir for some time.
The sky was growing light and Tony had brought up the horses.
“I have an idea they’ll try to get away from us,” Chet said. “But we’ll
fool them. Hero and Poke can travel twice as much trail in a day as
those sorry ponies they have.”
“Right!” agreed Dig.
The boys had only enough water in their canteens for breakfast—none for
the horses, or for their own ablutions. “We’ll wait till we reach the
first water-hole,” Chet advised. “Cinch on the saddles, Dig.”
They had time to eat a good breakfast, however. But Dig grumbled over
one thing.
“I’d give a dollar for a hunk of bread!” he declared.
“We’ll appreciate white-flour bread all the more when we get it again,”
his chum told him.
Suddenly the boys saw the two men clamber into their saddles. They
started back for the edge of the timber. Chet and Dig were ready and
quickly fastened their blanket-rolls upon their saddles. They led their
mounts to the open plain.
There they saw Steve and Tony cantering away in an easterly direction,
taking the back track.
“They’re going back to that camp of theirs where Steve says he lost the
deeds, Dig,” Chet declared eagerly. “Come on!”
“I’m with you,” agreed his chum and spurred the black horse after the
bay.
They had not gone a mile when the men looked back and saw that they were
pursued. The boys did not draw near to them but they showed a dogged
intention of keeping on their trail.
“That Steve-man is madder’n a hatter,” chuckled Dig. “He don’t like our
company a little bit.”
The men drew in their horses and glared back at the trail boys. The
latter stopped their mounts as well and sat calmly, waiting. The men
were in eager and angry conference. It was plain that they did not
wholly agree as to their future course.
Finally Steve jerked his pony around and cantered away toward the
southwest. Tony followed more slowly, and evidently against his will.
The boys waited until they were some distance off, and then turned their
own horses in the same direction.
“If I knew where they had camped yesterday noon—this side of the river,
of course—I’d say, let’s go there and search the camping place,” said
Chet thoughtfully. “But it would take too long to find the place, and
meanwhile the scoundrels might be riding hard for Grub Stake and fooling
us. For there’s always the chance that that fellow Steve has the deeds,
after all.”
“They weren’t on him, that’s sure,” remarked Digby.
“He might even have had them hidden in that hollow log. We didn’t think
to search it,” Chet rejoined. “No! our best course is to keep watch of
them.”
“Come on, then,” said his chum, tightening Poke’s rein. “They’re getting
a good way in the lead.”
There was not much chance of the rascals getting away from them,
however. Not for the first few hours, at least. The strip of timber they
soon rode through was not very wide, and out upon the other side the
open plain faced them again.
All the time the quarry was bearing off toward the Grub Stake trail. The
mining town, Chet figured, could not be much more than fifty miles away
now. They had come west a long way since first seeing the herd of
buffaloes that had toled them off the trail and caused Dig to abandon
his friend, the maverick.
“If they are going to Grub Stake we’ll be able to put a spoke in their
wheel with Mr. Morrisy,” said Chet. “We’ll hope Steve hasn’t the deeds
any more than we have. Of course, my recommendation to the Wells Fargo
Express Company was with the deeds, too; but my description doesn’t fit
either of those rascals, I hope—nor can they sign my name. Father’s
money will be safe.”
“It puzzles me why they are going at all, if they haven’t the papers,”
Dig observed.
“Maybe they are going for grub. They can’t have much—and a mighty poor
outfit for camping, anyway. I didn’t see any meat in their camp last
night,” Chet said.
“That might be the reason. Well, we need some stuff ourselves. I hope
they lead us straight to town.”