“Sure as shooting! I know there is! You hear me shout! Once on a time, at Fardale, he studied out right before me a cipher letter that was written this same way by one of his enemies. He reckoned I would remember that. He reckoned I would tumble and read the cipher in this letter.”
Although Frank must have been excited also, he still restrained himself.
“If that’s the case,” he said, “you should be able to read this with ease. Go ahead and do so.”
“Gimme a pencil,” panted the Texan.
Frank did so, and then Brad began by underscoring the first word of the letter after Frank’s name, following with the second word, having skipped one, then he skipped two, and underscored the next word. Then skipped three, underscoring the next, and so on through the greater part of the first paragraph. When this was finished, the words underscored read as follows:
“I am in little house near windmill sta.y.”
“There she is!” Brad almost yelled, waving it wildly around his head. “That’s the message. I followed her up further, but it ends right there. After that he just writes what they tell him to.”
“‘I am in little house near windmill sta.y,’” read Frank, having taken the paper from the Texan’s hand. “Are you certain that ‘sta.y’ comes into it?”
“Well, part of her comes into it,” averred Brad. “She comes into it up to the period, at least. I reckons that’s why the period comes in there. ‘Sta.’—what does that stand for, Frank?”
“Station,” said Merry at once. “He has written that he is in a little house near Windmill Station. That’s it, Brad, my boy. We know where to find him at last, thanks to you.”