“Why didn’t you spring upon him and capture him?”
“You forget, colonel,” put in Frank, “that the fellow was gone before Ballard and Fritz found out what he had cached. And you also forget that, at that time, none of us knew that Darrel was suspected of robbing your safe—or, for that matter, that any robbery had occurred. Another thing: Last night Darrel was sleeping in our tent, in a blanket bed between Clancy and me. He could not have stirred without wakening us. From ten o’clock last night until six this morning Ellis Darrel never left that tent.”
“Then, of course,” deduced the colonel, “he could not have been the one who hid the money.”
“Nor the one who took it from your safe, sir,” added Merriwell; “for the one who did the stealing must certainly have kept the money in his hands until he attempted to secrete it in the cañon.”
“That,” said the colonel, “is plausible, but not conclusive. Darrel might have given the money to some one to take care of for him, and that some one may have been the person who hid it under the rock. I do not say that this is so,” he added, “but that it might have happened. As the matter now stands, the whole thing is a mystery. By your excellent work, Merriwell, you have thrown doubt upon my suspicions of Darrel. Possibly—I may say probably—he had no hand in taking the money from my safe. But who did commit the robbery?”
“I reckon Merriwell’s right,” spoke up Hawkins, his face glowing with delight over the way Frank had conducted the defense of Darrel. “You never could send this feller up, kunnel, agin’ the showing Merriwell has made for him.”
“I shall not try to,” said Hawtrey. “I am happier than I know how to express over the outcome of this little conference here on the mesa.”
Impulsively Darrel started toward his uncle with outstretched hand.
“Uncle Alvah,” said he, his voice tremulous with emotion, “I thank you for giving me any consideration at all. I——”
The colonel, giving Darrel a stern look, put his hands behind him.