settled yours, Danny,” Ben said. “Keep him covered while I help Dave.”
A minute later a dazed Moon was lifted to his feet, hands and arms bound.
“Well, that’s that,” Dave said, wiping his brow. “Now to get Doris to the ranch and nab the other crooks.”
“How did you ever find this place, Dave?” Doris asked, as Ben climbed out of the cave.
“Why, Doris, meet Danny Sumpter! If it had not been for him we wouldn’t have found you,” Dave exclaimed.
As gravely as if the introduction were being made under the most formal conditions Danny, still holding the rope that bound Moon, lifted his sombrero.
“Pleased to meet you, Madam,” he said. “I’ve heard a lot about you.”
Doris laughed at the absurdity of introductions and polite phrases under the circumstances.
“Thank you a million times, Danny Sumpter,” she responded. “I’ll never forget your kindness.”
“No trouble, I’m sure,” gravely replied the old man. “I was jest waitin’ my chance to get even with Henry Moon here, an’ if it be so it helped you out at the same time, why, no extra charge.”
“Hey!” bellowed Ben frorh above. “Do you like it so well down there you ain’t a-comin’ up?” Dave assisted Doris through the opening. “Why, it isn’t so dark up here,” she exclaimed. “Is it still today or is it tomorrow?”
“Still Monday,” Ben observed, hauling on the rope which presently fetched the dazed and unresisting Moon to the surface. “Stand up, you snake!”
Doris gulped in great lungsful of the bracing air, and flung her arms wide.
“Oh, I’m so happy I could sing for joy!” she cried, her face lifted to the crimson afterglow on the eastern peaks.
“Speaking of singing,” Dave said, “Miss Bedelle is up on the road, and I guess Kitty and Marshmallow are there by now, too.”
The four and their captive climbed up the face of the slope down which Doris had crept so cautiously hours before, and as they went Dave told Doris how her rescue had been effected.
“I didn’t know what had become of you at all,” he said. “I even thought you must have slipped into some gully invisible from where we were watching, and had escaped by following it on hands and knees.
“Ben and I were coming down the arroyo, with no idea how to start looking for you, when Danny suddenly dropped down on us from the road. He was with Miss Bedelle, who was looking for her brother, and had met Kitty and Marshmallow. So they followed us and Danny said he bet he knew where you were—in the cave.”
“You see,” Danny wheezed, “I been a-spyin’ on this human cactus, bidin’ my good time to git even with him fer stampedin’ my horses an’ blindin’ my pet cayuse. I watched him dodgin’ in and out of this holler, a-buildin’ of his cave, and once I went down in it after he left to see what mischief was a-doin’. That was before he stocked it with them barrels an’ boxes, an’ started drillin’.”
“What is in the barrels?” Dave asked Moon, who shuffled mutely along at the end of the rope. “Blasting powder,” Doris replied for him.
“Powder and dynamite and stuff like that. That’s why I knocked the matches out of his hand. I thought he might be so crazed with rage that he would have willingly blown himself to pieces if he knew we were being killed at the same time.”
Dave contemplated the captive crook with Horror.
Moon, lifting his bowed head, flashed a look of hatred at Doris that proved him capable of the mad scheme of which she had suspected him.
“Here are the ponies,” Dave sighed with relief. “It won’t be long before our troubles are over.”
CHAPTER XXV
Farewell to Raven Rock
“An’ this is Miss Doris Force.”
Miss Bedelle thrust out a muscular little hand and grasped Doris’s extended one.
Ben, having completed his introductions, busied himself with lashing Moon more securely on the back of the pony.
“Miss Force, you must think this a barbarous corner of the world,” the famous opera singer said. “Until this man and his villainous accomplices came here it was ideal. But thanks to you we shall soon be rid of him and his schemes.”
“Thanks to me!” Doris repeated. “Thanks to you and your able men, Miss Bedelle. If it had not been for Mr. Sumpter and Mr. Corlies—”
Ben interrupted with a hoot of derision.
“At any rate, this is not an ideal spot for a visit,” Lolita Bedelle laughed, putting an arm around Doris’s waist. “You must be exhausted and unstrung, you poor thing. I shall drive you to the Saylor’s ranch at once. They must be worried.
“Danny, you ride with Ben and take that man to the ranch. Have a guard set over him and in the morning we’ll have him jailed properly,” the singer continued. “I’ll take Miss Force and Mr. Chamberlin to the Saylor’s.”
“But Marshmallow and Kitty—” Doris began anxiously, as she seated herself in the roadster.
As if in answer to a summons, the two riders came slowly into the light of the automobile lamps, for it was quite dark by now.
“Ahoy!” Marshmallow called. “Doris there?”
“Here I am, Marshmallow!” Doris cried, jumping out of the car again, and running toward her friends.
“I’d get off, but I could never climb back on this horse again,” Marshmallow grinned apologetically.
Kitty, however, was on the ground and had her arms around her chum.
“Dud-dud-d-d—” was all she could say, and burst into tears. “Oh, Dud-dud-Doris!”
Doris embraced her.
“I’m all right, Kitty! Don’t cry! I’m the happiest girl in America, for we have Henry Moon a prisoner with enough evidence against him to keep him that way for ages,” she laughed.
Dave, at great self-sacrifice, insisted upon letting Doris and Kitty ride together in Miss Bedelle’s car, and swung into the saddle of Kitty’s horse to clinch the argument.
“Then let us get started,” Miss Bedelle suggested.
“Tell Mrs. Saylor to kill a couple of fatted calves,” Marshmallow called out as the car moved past. “Both for me, with lots of gravy.”
“You’ve earned them,” Kitty waved back. Skillfully, Miss Bedelle avoided rocks and holes in the rough trail as she drove swiftly toward the Crazy Bear ranch-house.
“Mr. Speary told me all about you and your quest, Miss Force,” she said. “I think I shall call you Doris. May I? I had hoped to ask you
