“I are,” was the laconic reply.
“Can you tell me how I can get to Mr. Randolph’s place?”
Jake Pettigrew nearly swallowed the straw in his surprise, and was some time recovering it. When he had done so, his face was rather flushed and in his eyes there was a look of unmistakable interest.
“Randolph’s place?” he exclaimed. “The Folly, you mean?”
“That’s what they call it, I believe,” Merriwell answered.
“Take the footpath just beyond Injun Head Rock,” the lanky man directed, resuming with an evident effort his air of indifference. “It’s about four miles along the trail. You can’t miss it, ’cause the rock looks like the head of an Injun. ’Tain’t of’en Randolph has callers.”
“So I understand,” Dick said. “Is he at home, do you know?”
“So help me, no,” the man answered hastily. “He may be, or he mayn’t. I don’t know nothin’ about him.”
The Yale man thanked him, and with the engine started, the car continued up the hilly trail on second speed. They passed the rocky peak which, strange to say, really did bear some resemblance to an Indian’s head, and a few hundred yards beyond came to a clearly defined track leading from Bonnet Trail up into the foothills.
Dick turned the car in to one side of the road well out of the way. Pocketing the coil plug, he followed Buckhart out of the machine, and they started up the narrow, rocky track on foot.