last article to be dropped was the packet which the girl had taken from the bosom of her dress, and Al Biggers had to be told the second time to let it go.
“All right, boys,” Chet remarked cheerfully. “Back away now while I git the hat. Then stand where you are and count a hundred before you move. Don’t count too fast either if you don’t want tuh stop a bullet.”
Hat in hand Chet withdrew silently into the shadows and waited. The two young outlaws had ample time to count several hundred before they moved. Then they picked up their weapons, mounted their horses, and rode away into the night. Chet grinned. He had but one worry concerning them; that was that they might hear his horse on their way back.
A more immediate worry was how to return the loot to those it belonged to. It would have been easy to walk boldly in and pass the money over, but he had a natural aversion to heroics. Besides, he had other plans with which such a procedure would interfere.
Then it occurred to him that he didn’t need to show himself to return the money. Right now Nevada was piling dry wood on the fire, and wavering lights were dancing far across the little park.
“Hello!” he shouted presently.
Immediately the three at the fire became rigid. Chet couldn’t blame them for being nervous.
“Who—who—who is there?” Nevada quavered. His voice sounded so much like the hooting of an owl that Chet laughed.
“I’m a friend,” Chet replied. “Listen: Those bandits lost the money they took from you. If you’ll come over here you’ll find it on the ground right where I am now.”
He wasn’t answered at once. The three around the fire counseled together. Nevada apparently suspected a trick, but Bud seized a flaming torch and came forward. His sister followed.
Chet hastily dumped the contents of his hat on the ground and withdrew to where he could watch in safety. By the light from Bud’s torch he saw them find the money and pick it up. Their pleasure and relief was a joy to watch.
“Hey, won’t yuh come over to the camp? We want to thank you for giving our money back,” Bud called.
Chet made no answer. He saw them vainly trying to pierce the darkness, and he had to throw himself flat to escape detection when the boy suddenly and unexpectedly extinguished the torch. They returned to the camp at last, and Kelvin made his way back to his horse.
Mike was grazing undisturbed, and Chet rolled peacefully into his blankets.
The next morning Chet was awakened by the rattling of wheels. It was only a little past daybreak, but the Harrison party was already on the move—anxious to get out of Penoloa canyon before other misadventures befell them. Sitting up in his blankets he watched them through a screen of bushes as they passed. They seemed happy. He smiled. This being a sort of modern Robin Hood made a man feel good.
He could dismiss them from his mind for the present. His concern now was with the two young outlaws he had held up. He wondered if they would attempt to hold him up as they had surely planned, or if their experience of the night before had soured them on hold-ups for the time being.
He built a fire and leisurely cooked breakfast. Mike had eaten all he wanted and was resting on three legs while his eyes curiously followed the movements of his master.
At last Chet saddled the horse, tied the blanket-roll firmly in place, and rode up the canyon. He rode with seeming carelessness, and he had taken off his gun belt and hooked it over the saddle horn as men frequently do on long rides to avoid the drag at their waists. Yet he was alert, and his keen eyes missed no movement in the brush.
He hadn’t decided what he would do if he were held up. He had a hundred and fifty dollars expense money on him, but he didn’t propose to get himself killed trying to save it. The only thing that really worried him was that they might take his horse. If they didn’t leave him afoot he was confident that he could recover his other property eventually, Wild Ones or no Wild Ones.
His speculations were wasted. Shortly before noon he emerged from the narrow canyon onto a sort of plateau, broken by rolling hills and long, shallow ravines. If the outlaws had been going to hold him up they would have done so in the canyon.
A mile to his right he saw a log cabin, and a fenced pasture. This he judged to be Hopkins’ ranch. He was convinced that it was a rendezvous for the Wild Ones—in fact, Kirk Holliday’s gang had many such places scattered throughout the range country. It was nearly dinner time, and without the least hesitation he headed for the cabin.
As he rode up he saw four saddled horses tied close to the cabin, and an equal number of men were outside in the shade. Another man was inside cooking dinner. And two of those men were Al Biggers and Jack Fossum. The latter was grinning up at Chet like a Cheshire cat. Biggers’ eyes glimmered with suspicion.
Before he spoke Chet cast a swift glance at the other two men. One was small, dark and wiry; so very dark, in fact, that Chet suspected the man of having Indian or Mexican blood. The other was a blond young giant, with a pleasant face, but with baby blue eyes which were anything but innocent. Chet knew instinctively that those eyes were shrewd in the reading of faces, and he suspected that a flinty hardness lay behind their bland good-nature.
Members of the Wild Ones, Chet catalogued them instantly. But he would have been utterly amazed had he known that the blond giant was none other than Kirk Holliday, the leader of the Wild Ones, and that the dark-skinned fellow was Blackie Payne, his chief lieutenant—a man who would shoot to kill upon the slightest provocation, and who had been known to shoot a man for asking if he was an Indian.
“Well, well, Mr. Kelvin,” Jack Fossum greeted genially. “We been waitin’ for yuh.”
FOUR
CHET KELVIN would have been less than human had the present situation created no nervousness. His thoughts clicked with lightning speed, and he wondered if the hold-up he had expected back in the canyon was to come off now, or if, perhaps, the men knew that it was he who had turned the tables the night before, and were about to exact some more sinister vengeance. But he knew that it would do no good to betray either fear or too much surprise.
“Why, hello, hombres,” he greeted easily. “This is a surprise to see you here. I thought yuh was headed for Pipe Springs.”
Jack Fossum got lazily to his feet and stretched.
“Git down, pardner, git down,” he invited. “Our good friend Hopkins’ll have dinner ready in a jiff. I’ll tell him tuh lay another plate.”
“That’ll be fine,” Chet said, as he threw his left leg over the saddle horn and dropped to the ground. “It was thinkin’ about dinner which headed me over here in the first place. Wonder if I can git a feed of grain for my horse, or else turn him somewhere?”
“I’ll see,” Fossum said, and disappeared inside the cabin.
Kelvin was acutely aware that his two erstwhile drinking companions had failed to account for their change of plan. It wasn’t reassuring.
The blond giant looked up indolently. “How far yuh made today?” he queried.
“Can’t just say,” Chet replied just as casually. “Stayed all night with a Mormon bishop name of Carey.”
“Yeah,
