suddenly to have lost interest in horse teeth.
"Oh, never mind, Bud," he said. "I guess I'll let it go till another day."
"That's funny," said Bud. "You sure was keen for it a little while ago."
He did not see the figure of a horseman winding into the hills in the West, and had he, he might not have connected it with the tenderfoot's sudden loss of interest in horse teeth; but Marvel had seen and he had recognized both horse and rider, even though they were little more than a speck against the hillside.
Marvel and Bud rode slowly toward the ranch. The former, riding slightly in the rear, was scrutinizing his companion meditatively.
"How long you been with this outfit, Bud?" asked Marvel presently.
"I've always been on the ranch. I was born there. My uncle used to own it. When Cory turned it into a boarding house I went to work for him."
"Known him long?"
"Couple of years."
"I don't see how he makes a living out of his boarders," said Bruce.
"It's been tough goin' until lately," replied Bud. "It's pickin' up now; but he always seems to have plenty of dough. He has a mine somewhere, he says, and a ranch, too."
"I guess he'd be needing them," said Bruce, "to keep up this outfit; but I don't see how he runs two or three businesses."
"Oh, he and Butts go away every once in a while to look after his other interests."
"You never went with him?" asked Marvel.
"No, he never took me along. He leaves me here to look after things while he's away."
As they talked, Marvel had dropped back until Baldy's head was about opposite Bud's knee. Riding in this position, Bud did not see his companion raise one of his feet and remove a spur, which he quietly slipped inside his shirt.
"I should think all these boarders would get on his nerves," said Bruce.
"Some of them do," replied Bud.
"Me, for instance," suggested Bruce. Bud grinned.
"Hell!" exclaimed Marvel, "I've lost a spur." He reined in and so did Bud.
"Let's go back and look for it," said Bud.
"No," replied Marvel, "you go on back to the ranch. I'll look for it myself."
"Pshaw!" exclaimed Bud. "I'd just as soon help you find it."
"No, you go on back to the ranch. I've learned what a nuisance a dude is, and I'll feel better if you just go on and let me find it for myself."
"Whatever you say," said Bud. "We aim to please, as the feller said."
"See you later," said Marvel; and reining Baldy about he started back down the valley.
At a point where a dry wash came out of the hills from the West he stopped and turned in his saddle. Bud was jogging quietly toward home, his back turned. For a few seconds Marvel watched him; then he headed into the dry wash, the high banks of which would hide him from Bud's view should the latter happen to turn his eyes backward.
Now he rode more swiftly, spurring Baldy into a lope, until the ascent toward the hills became too steep.
The arroyo he was following led to the summit of low hills near the point where he had seen the rider disappear shortly before; and as he neared the top he went more slowly, finally stopping just before he reached the ridge. Dismounting he dropped Baldy's reins to the ground and covered the remaining distance on foot.
It was a barren ridge, supporting but a scant growth of straggling brush. As he neared the top he dropped to his hands and knees and crawled the remaining distance to a point just behind a small bush that grew upon the crest of the ridge. Here he lay on his belly and wormed himself a few inches farther upward until his eyes topped the summit.
Beyond the ridge and below him lay a barren gully, in the bottom of which, a hundred yards up from the point at which he was spying on them, three men sat in their saddles; and one of them was addressing the other two rapidly and earnestly. This one was Cory Blaine.
An expression of satisfaction crossed Marvel's face. "That," he said enigmatically, "will be the other two."
For ten minutes Marvel lay there watching the three men in the gully below. Then he saw them gather their reins. Blaine spurred his horse up the side of the gully, while the other two turned down toward the valley.
Half way up the hillside Blaine reined in his mount and turned in the saddle. "Don't you fellers do no drinking tonight," he shouted back at the two below him, "and see that you are there on time tomorrow."
"Sure, boss," shouted back one of them in a thick, almost inarticulate voice.
"And that what I said about drinking goes double for you, Eddie," called Blaine, as he turned his horse's head upward again toward the summit of the ridge.
Marvel returned to Baldy and mounted him. Then he urged the horse at a reckless pace down the rough wash. Near the mouth of the arroyo he reined to the left, urging Baldy up the steep bank and across a low ridge; then he put the spurs to him, and ignoring the rocky terrain and the menace of innumerable badgers' holes he cut downward across the rolling hills parallel with the valley at a run.
Where the ridge finally melted into the floor of the valley, he reined Baldy to the left and so came at last into the mouth of the barren gully in which he had seen the three men talking.
Riding toward him now were two of the men, and as he came into view they eyed him intently. With what appeared to be considerable effort, he stopped Baldy in front of them, while they reined in their own ponies and viewed him with ill-concealed contempt.
"Who let you out, sister?" demanded one of them.
Marvel looked embarrassed. "My horse ran away with me," he explained, "and I guess I'm lost."
"Where you lost from, sis?" demanded one of the riders with exaggerated solicitude, and in the scarcely articulate tone that Marvel had previously heard when the speaker had addressed Blaine.
"That," soliloquized he, "would be Eddie;" and then aloud, "I'm stopping at the TF Ranch. Could you direct me how to get there?"
"Certainly," said Eddie. "Go straight up this here gulch." Then the men moved on.
"Them directions," said the second man, "will land the son-of- a-gun in Mexico, if he follows them."
"Well, they aint got no business roamin' around Arizona without their nurses," replied Eddie.
Marvel watched the two for a moment, his keen eyes taking in every detail of both men and horses. Then he rode slowly up the gulch, following the trail that the two had made going up and coming down, his eyes often bent upon the ground. When he reached the point where Blaine had spurred up over the ridge, he did likewise and presently dropped down into the valley on the other side where the ranch lay; and as he rode into the ranch yard, Eddie, far away, was still chuckling over the joke he had played upon the tenderfoot.
