Blinky spoils A sombrero

If astonishment and uneasiness were depicted on the countenances of Clark Jennings and his companions, equally amazed looks were cast upon the newcomers by Mr. Harkness’s party. The rancher was the first to recover his voice.

“Well, Clark,” he said rather sternly, “what are you doing here?”

“We’re not stealing sheepmen’s land and feed from them, Mr. Harkness,” spoke up Clark boldly, as soon as he saw by the rancher’s manner that the party was not, as he had at first feared, aware of Rob’s strange fate.

“We won’t discuss that old question now, Clark,” said Mr. Harkness leniently. “As long as there are sheepmen and cattlemen that question will always be productive of strife, more’s the pity. Besides, certain fence-cutting incidents ”

“You can’t say I cut your fences!” sputtered Clark angrily.

“Certainly not. I never dreamed of doing such a thing without the proper evidence.”

The rancher threw a grim emphasis into these last words.

“What we want from you now, Clark, is information.”

“Well?” asked the other in sullen tone.

“We have lost track of a young man who was my guest at the ranch,” explained Mr. Harkness, his dislike of being compelled to ask information of Clark Jennings showing in his face. “His name is Rob Blake ”

“Those two fellows know him well enough,” broke out Merritt, pointing at Bill Bender and Hank Handcraft. The faces of those two worthies grew green as the boy pointed accusingly at them. Unwittingly Merritt had come near hitting the nail on the head when he connected them in a vague way with Rob’s disappearance.

“Well, what if we do know him?” growled Hank sullenly.

“Mr. Harkness knows the mean tricks you put up on us in the East, so you needn’t try to pretend you never met us before,” went on Merritt angrily.

“Come, come, Merritt,” interrupted Mr. Harkness, “this will do no good. Whatever happened in the East is past and gone. What we want to know now is if they have seen Rob?”

“No, we ain’t,” declared Clark boldly. “Why, do you think he’s lost hereabouts?”

“That’s what we are afraid of. The Indians carried him off, and here, as you see, they were camped last night. I cherished a hope that he might have had the good fortune to escape.”

“I don’t know anything about it,” rejoined Clark in a more amiable tone, now that he saw that no suspicion attached to him.

“What yer ridin’ two on one pony for?” asked Blinky suddenly.

“None of your business,” rejoined Clark. “I guess we can ride the way we like.”

“Well, I guess so,” echoed Hank. “Fine way they interfere with gentlemen’s preferences out here in the West.”

“You had three ponies when you started out,” pursued Blinky, looking at the spurs on Hank’s feet, and noting the extra saddle which Clark carried behind him.

“We did not.”

“What yer got the extra saddle for, then, and what’s he got on spurs for, just ter decorate his handsome figure?”

“Well, I can if I want to, can’t I?” demanded Hank.

“We’re looking for a stray pony,” explained Clark glibly. “That’s why we’re carrying the saddle to put on him when we find him. That, too, accounts for the spurs. Anything else you’d like to know?”

“Yes,” demanded Merritt, his eyes blazing and his voice shaking with excitement as he stepped forward. “Where did you get Rob Blake’s sombrero?”

His eye had fallen on that article of headgear just as Hank had clumsily tried to conceal it. Merritt instantly recognized it by the stamped band about its crown.

“Why, I we that is it’s my hat,” lied Hank clumsily.

“That’s not true, and you know it!” shouted Merritt, carried away by rage. “You know where Rob Blake is. You ”

Crack!

The boy staggered back, half-blinded, as Bill Bender raised his heavy quirt and cut him full across the face with it.

“Come on, boys!” shouted Clark, as Merritt reeled backward. “Let’s get out of this.”

The two ponies sprang forward, leaving the ranch party half-stunned by the suddenness of Bill’s brutal blow. But it was only for a second. In that interval of time Blinky’s face had grown wrinkled and drawn with anger, and his hand had slid back to his hip and produced his forty-four. In another instant Bill would have paid dearly for his blow, but the rancher’s hand fell on the cow-puncher’s arm.

“Not that way, Blinky,” he said.

“All right, boss,” rejoined Blinky regretfully; “but it would have been a heap of satisfaction to have let daylight into that coyote’s carcass.”

“Those fellows know where Rob is!” shouted Merritt, across whose face an angry red ridge lay, marking where the quirt had struck him. “Stop them!”

“Steady on, boy, steady on,” said Mr. Harkness in an even, cool tone.

“And we without a spavined cayuse to follow ’em!” raged one of the cow-punchers.

As he spoke, the three tormentors of the ranch party topped the little rise.

As they did so, Clark Jennings rose in his stirrups and faced back.

“Ye-ow!” he yelled defiantly, waving his hat mockingly toward them.

Bang!

The sombrero was suddenly whirled out of the youth’s hand as if some invisible grasp had been laid upon it.

Blinky looked apologetically at Mr. Harkness, and then carefully blew the smoke from the barrel of his pistol, the weapon with which he had just punctured Clark’s headgear.

“Awful sorry, boss,” he said contritely, “but I just plumb couldn’t help it.”

“Well, I don’t know that I blame you,” said Mr. Harkness, as the Clark Jennings party vanished in a hurry.

The encounter with the three ne’er-do-wells had, however, changed the rancher’s plans. Deducing from the fact that Hank Handcraft had Rob’s hat in his possession, that the boy must have escaped from the Indians in some miraculous way, it was concluded that it would be a mere waste of effort to pursue the Moquis. The search must now be made for Rob himself. Even Tubby’s spirits were dashed by the disturbing occurrences of the last few hours, and he and Merritt were both silent as the party made its way back to the cliff where the ponies had been left the day before. The plan now was to mount and scatter through the range.

“We’ll run a fine-tooth comb through it,” was the emphatic way Mr. Harkness put it, “and if we don’t find the boy, it’ll be because he isn’t on the top of the earth.”

All that day they retraced their steps, and at night made camp not far from the entrance to the tunnel. They did not dare to proceed in the dark, for fear of once more losing their path, and even more valuable time. It was not a lively party that settled down in the evening glow for a hastily cooked and not over-abundant supper. Even Tubby seemed distracted and worried.

Suddenly Merritt, who was walking up and down, trying to evolve some theory to fit the facts in Rob’s case, gave a shout and pointed over to the southwest.

“Look, look!” he shouted. “Off there what is it?”

The boy’s keen eyes had espied a thin spiral of blue smoke ascending from a hilltop against the burnished gold of the sunset.

“A signal fire!” announced Blinky, after an interval.

“It may be Rob signaling for help!” exclaimed Merritt, as the smoke rose and vanished and rose and vanished at regular intervals.

“No, it ain’t him. The Boy Scouts use the Morse, don’t they?”

“Yes. What has that to do with it?”

“Well, this is Injun code.”

“Indian?”

“Sure. The Injuns have as distinct a smoke-signal code as we have a wireless system. It works just as good, too, from what I can hear. Now, if we had their code book we ”

“What, the Indians have a code book?”

“You bet.”

“Where?”

“In their rascally heads, son, where it’s safe,” rejoined the cow-puncher.

“Hullo, look! There’s an answer,” cried Tubby, suddenly pointing to another hilltop some distance from the first.

Another thin column of smoke was rolling upward from it in evident answer to the first.

“Those fellows are making a date,” decided the rough-and-ready Blinky. “I’d like to be on hand when they keep it, and maybe we’d find out something about Rob.”