"SOMETHING'S ABOUT DUE TO POP!"
"This seems a pretty tame proceeding," Bud observed whimsically, when they had dismounted in the hollow where Gelle was sitting cross-legged in the grass. "By rights there should be some shooting at the wind-up of a robbery the size of this one. I did take a prisoner, though, didn't I? But the old pelican doesn't seem to be very fierce—how'd you make out, Jelly?"
Gelle looked up sourly and pointed with his thumb. "I been keepin' the flies off your treasure trove, Bud, just as long as I'm agoin' to. If this is all they is to bandit-huntin', I'm goin' home and bug potatoes fer excitement. Where you goin' now? Snipe huntin'?"
"I'll watch this fellow," Kline the druggist offered promptly. "Give me a gun, somebody, in case he wakes up. Lord, that sun's hot!"
"Yeah, it's nice an' shady here—if shade's what you're after," Gelle told him dryly. "Bring any lunch baskets? Right nice, shady dell fer a buck picnic, and I could eat without bein' forced. And say, Bud, any time you feel like tellin' what you found or expect to find, I'll be willin' to listen."
"Come along and I'll show you," Bud grinned. "Palmer's whole outfit's in town, Delkin says—excepting the cook. We're going to investigate a rat's nest down here by the river."
"Yeah?" Gelle looked from one to the other, and then grinned in slowly awakening amusement that spread to his eyes and left a twinkle there. "Judgin' from that praise-God look on these plutocrats' faces,—oh, well, come on!"
They filed down through the bushes after Bud, who led the way straight to the hedge and up over rocks that left no trace, to the place where Skookum had seen his grandfather at work like an old badger. A broken fragment of ledge lay piled there, and behind the rocks, hidden from sight until one climbed the pile and looked over, a dry, deep niche, narrow of mouth and roomy inside, lay revealed. Within it they saw a jumbled heap of sticks, dead leaves and twigs—a rat's nest, any chance observer would have sworn. But Bud picked up a larger branch and thrust away the litter. Delkin crowded past him eagerly and began clawing at the nearest of three ribbed, iron kegs with tight-fitting lids, such as are used for storing blasting powder.
"Gosh, is that money?" Gelle, peering over Delkin's shoulder, spoke in a hushed tone. "Gosh! Lemme heft one of them kegs, Mr. Delkin!"
His face red and sweaty with excitement, Delkin tilted the keg on its side, picked up a canvas sack as if it were very heavy and put it into Gelle's eager, outstretched hands. He laughed foolishly at the look of astonishment on the long cowpuncher's face and reached for another sack. He was like a boy clawing gifts out of his Christmas stocking and truly believing in Santa Claus. Bud, who had seen how despair could rack him, swallowed a lump that appeared mysteriously in his throat. It was worth a lot, he told himself, to see a man so overwhelmingly elated and happy.
"Brad, here are those bonds of Morgan's—why do thieves take stuff they never can use? Stauffer, here, you take charge of these—notes and mortgages, I guess they are. I wonder if Palmer was foxy enough to take out that note of his that the bank holds! God, if we could get Charlie's life back with the rest, I'd be the happiest man on earth! Well—that's all, I guess. No—but this isn't the bank's. This must belong to Palmer."
"Glom it!" Gelle advised grimly, but Delkin shook his head.
"No—all we want is our own. Well, no use putting back the rubbish, is there? If they come here at all, they're bound to find out the bank's property has disappeared. And if we have any luck at all, they'll never get back here. Jelly, do you want to carry the gold?"
"I should smile!" Gelle grinned widely to prove it as he held open the grain sack. "Any chances the gold might some of it rub off on m' shirt? How much is they, Mr. Delkin?"
"A little over twelve thousand dollars, according to the books. Brad's carrying three times as much; yes, Brad's got forty thousand dollars right there in his hands."
"Yeah?" Gelle cast a mildly disdainful glance at the package of bank notes which Bradley was stowing away in a bag. "Mebbe so, but it shore don't carry the same thrill as what this gold money packs. That why you left all that money in the keg?" He turned, shoulders slightly bent under his load, and stared at the emptied powder kegs, and at the one which was not empty. "It shore is a crime to leave all that good money there," he complained. "Chances are Palmer stole it, anyway. Me, I don't believe the old hellion ever did get an honest dollar in his life. It'd burn his fingers."
"But that doesn't give us any right to it," Delkin told him firmly. "Some one is liable to come on a long lope to see how about it. You fellows go ahead; I'll bring up the rear. And remember, that open stretch down there is in plain sight of the stables, so you'd better take it on the trot."
Gelle did better than that; he sprinted for the bushes ahead of the other three, got hung up in the wire fence because he tried to crawl through without slipping the sack of coin to the ground, and so caught a barb fast in the canvas and had to be helped by Bud, who overtook him while he was still wriggling like an impaled bug.
Delkin, Bradley and Stauffer went on and were jubilating in hushed voices with Kline when the Meadowlark contingent arrived. They stood apart from the old man, who still snored comfortably with his lips puffed out through his thin whiskers. Bud's capture was likely to prove embarrassing.
"What'll we do?" Bradley asked impatiently. "Can't turn him loose here—and Kline says he's been asleep all this while, so he doesn't know yet we've come on to the scene. Jelly, can't you stay right here and watch him for a while—till Bud comes back?"
Gelle stood with the sack of gold between his feet, as if he meant to protect it from all claimants, and stared glumly from one to the other.
"I can, yes. But I shore hate to like hell," he admitted sourly. "You'll go awn in an' have a scrap, chances are, an' I'll be settin' here like a knot on a log, watchin' this ole pelican's whiskers wave in and out. Excitin', ain't it? Damn fine way to spend an afternoon! When it comes to thinkin' up things fer me to do, you shore have got bright idees!"
"Seems to be about the only thing we can do about it, Jelly," Bud said soothingly. "We could tie him up, but even then it wouldn't be absolutely safe. You can't blame these bankers for not wanting to take a chance of losing all this money, now that they have it back. He might get loose and warn Palmer in some way. We'll go back by a roundabout way through the hills, just because they don't want a soul to know they've got the money. Once that's safe, we'll go after Palmer and his bunch, yes. But you must see, Jelly, that—"
"Oh, hell, go awn and leave me to m' thoughts!" Gelle pulled down the corners of his mouth, stepped over the gold, turned back and gave it a kick as if he would show his familiarity with it, and grinned at Bud. "I never did have no luck, nohow." He lounged over and sat down beside the sleeper, and spat disgustedly into the lush grass near by. He waved them toward town, made a derisive gesture and started to roll a smoke, giving them no further attention.
"Jelly's a fine boy, all right, and it's a damned shame he has to stand guard—but I'm darned if I'm sorry enough for him to stay in his place," Bud observed with futile sympathy, when they were riding townward by devious trails which kept to the hills and concealed them from any passer-by on the road. "Still—are you dead sure Palmer's bunch will stay in town?"
Bradley laughed.
"The way Tony and the boys had it framed, Palmer's gang will give no heed to the passing hours. You know, of course, what the boys meant to do?"
"I didn't know they meant to do anything," Bud confessed. "Darn 'em, they must have held out on me."
"Well, now, if they don't get hung before we hit town, they may stir up something interesting. The idea was to play off drunk, and when the crowd was pretty thoroughly worked up, seeing them spend money—gold money which they acted sneaking about—each one of the boys planned to get a Palmer man off in a corner, do the 'weeping-drunk' and confess that he went down river from Meadowlark Basin in a boat, killed Charlie and robbed the bank, and that he had the stuff cached and wanted a man he could trust to help him get the stuff safely out of the country. They had it planned out to the last detail: how long it ought to take them to get so drunk they'd confide in a man they never had chummed with, and just how they'd manage to lead up to the subject. Tony said he'd take Bat Johnson into his confidence, and Rosen was to tackle Palmer himself, I believe. Bob and Mark were going to buttonhole Ed White and the Mexican. It sure sounded like it might work—if they don't get lynched, as I said.
"They figure that one or all of Palmer's gang will get so uneasy there will be a general stampede to where the money's hidden to see if the Meadowlark boys have any of them found out where it's cached. Either that, or they'll give themselves away by wanting to fight or something. Of course," he added, glancing down with a grin at the bundle tied at the fork of his saddle, "they didn't know we'd have the stuff safely put away long before they could trail any one to the spot where it was hid."
"And they expect to stay sober long enough to put that over?" Bud's lips tilted upwards with amusement.
"You bet they did! Just before you showed up, they'd poured whisky all over themselves, by the smell. On the outside," he added meaningly. "I don't see how they'd dare light a cigarette—they were sure saturated."
Bud touched his borrowed horse with the spurs.
"We'd better be riding," he called over his shoulder. "If I know anything about that bunch, something's about due to pop!"