“Here, read it yourself. I seen the operator typing it out.”
Doris ripped open the envelope and read:
“Your Uncle John took air express should arrive Monday.—Wardell Force.”
The girl handed the telegram to her companions. “How do yotl know he won’t arrive until after sundown?” she demanded of the messenger.
“The airline don’t go through Raven Rock,” he explained. “Prob’ly wouldn’t stop here if it did. It lands down at the junction, and your uncle can make the 5:07 from there that gits in here ’bout 7:30.”
“Well, I am certainly thankful to you for all the extra information,” Doris laughed. “This is the first time I learned more from a telegram than the sender wrote.”
“Oh, you’re welcome,” grinned the young man, blushing for no reason at all. He leaped into his saddle and rode off.
“Better and better!” Dave cried. “Say, when the army of ‘General’ Force moves on the enemy, won’t they get a shock?”
“Now that Uncle John can take charge of the affairs himself, perhaps we had better not interview Miss Bedelle until he arrives,” Doris suggested.
“A fine idea,” praised Dave. “Now what shall we do?”
“Let’s ride over the property again to make sure we remember the boundaries that Plum showed us,” Doris said. “Then we can point out to my uncle exactly what the lay of the land is, so far as we know it.”
“Good!” cried Marshmallow. “Maybe Mrs. Saylor will pack us a lunch.”
Mrs. Saylor would, and did. The young folks donned their riding clothes, and the middle of the forenoon saw the cavalcade mount the rise above the ranch house, wave goodbye to Mrs. Mallow, and then vanish over the slope. Poor Wags, his paws swollen from an encounter with a fish-hook cactus, had to remain behind.
None realized into what thrilling adventures they were riding, as they spurred on their horses.
After locating the first boundary post, or benchmark as Plum had called it, the quartet decided that such success deserved a treat, and so they had their lunch.
“Let’s take a bee-line from here and cut across to the opposite marker, instead of looking for the next one on this side,” Doris proposed.
“Good, that will test our plainscraft and take us over new country, too,” Dave seconded.
Instead of following the four sides of the great square, the friends struck diagonally across the first “section.”
It was rough going, and confusing. Cattle paths criss-crossed the earth, hills and deep gullies forced the group to detour. They crossed the road over which Marshmallow had driven them early the week before, the only familiar spot in the landscape.
“Pss-st!” whispered Doris, who was for the time being in the lead.
Following her outstretched finger, the others saw a solitary horseman clambering up the steep sides of a hill about a quarter of a mile away.
“What’s a man want to climb up there for?” Marshmallow panted. “It’s hard enough riding along the level.”
“Everybody duck!” Doris commanded. “I have a hunch! Into this gully, quick!”
Four horses were wheeled on their hind legs and were forced over the stony brink of a small arroyo.
“Golly, what’s the idea?” Marshmallow demanded.
“I have an idea that man is going up the hill to be a lookout,” Doris said. “He’s the one who ducked out of sight when we went through here with Plum.”
“A lookout for what?” Kitty asked, bewildered.
“That’s what we’ll find out,” Doris said grimly. “Marshmallow, you creep up the bank of this gully and keep your eye on that horseman, and Dave, suppose you walk on and see where this leads to.”
The boys obeyed as if they had recognized Doris as the leader of the expedition. The girls remained on the spot, holding the bronchos.
Marshmallow inched his one hundred and seventy pounds up the shelving side of the arroyo, while Dave, hugging the bank, moved forward as rapidly as caution permitted to scout the lay of the land.
“Your spy is perched on top of the hill,” Marshmallow called down softly. “Most of the time he looks toward the town, I think. Now he’s looking all around.”
“Keep an eye on him until Dave comes back,” Doris replied.
Kitty looked at her chum with new respect.
“It’s too bad you are going to waste your time on opera singing,” she said. “You would make a success as manager of something—a store or a detective agency, or an army.”
“I hope we can help Uncle John settle this mystery in a jiffy,” Doris said, “so I won’t have to miss my lessons. And also, I want to meet Miss Bedelle.”
“Nothing new,” came from Marshmallow. “He’s still admiring the scenery.”
* * * *
It was nearly half an hour before Dave reappeared, but there was excitement written in his every move as he came toward them.
“There’s a gang working down below here,” he called softly, when he came within earshot. “I think they are drilling.”
“How far?” Doris demanded.
“About a half mile from here the gully opens into a big bowl, like a crater,” Dave reported. “It is pretty deep, and they are down at the bottom.”
“Did you hear that, Marshmallow?” Doris cried. “Come on down and we’ll investigate.”
The four mounted their patient ponies and in single file, sticking close to the bank and out of sight of the lookout, they rode forward.
“Let’s hitch the horses here,” Dave said at length. “We’ll be in sight of the men around the next turn.”
Although the ponies were trained to stand without hitching when the reins were thrown over their necks it was concluded that the safest thing to do would be to tie them to the shrubby creosote bushes that studded the arroyo.
Then, creeping in single file after Dave, they advanced upon the land thieves.
The gully dipped downward and came to an abrupt end near the crest of the bowl-like depression Dave had described.
“There they are,” he announced.
Throwing themselves flat on the ground, the four young people crept forward and peered into the hollow.
It was fifty or seventy-five feet deep and about half a mile across, and in the middle a significant steeple-like structure some twenty feet high had been erected out of new lumber.
Three
