“Well, have your own way, then. But you’ll find I’m right.”
And it did seem so. For though the trail was plain—at least so the boys believed—for part of the distance along which Gimp and the Parson indicated, it became faint and uncertain when a patch of stony ground was reached where the foot hills began, and ended at the opening of a deep rocky ravine which was a sort of blind alley.
“What’d I tell you?” crowed Hinkee Dee. “Next time you’ll take my advice.”
“Well, there’s been cattle along here, that’s sure!” declared the Parson, and others said the same.
“Well, if they were here, why aren’t they here now?” asked Hinkee Dee. “You can see there’s no sign of a stolen bunch. What would be the sense of driving cattle over there, anyhow? You couldn’t do anything with ’em once you got ’em here, ’ceptin’ maybe coop ’em up in that ravine. They couldn’t live there two days—no grass or water. These rustlers aren’t fools!”
“Well, there was cattle here, and not long ago,” declared the Parson.
“I s’pose them rustlers drove ’em here and then jumped ’em over the mountain on the other side?” sneered the assistant foreman. “Now you’ve had your way, let’s go back an’ try mine.”
Shaking their heads over the puzzle, Gimp and the Parson rode back with the others. But though there were also signs of cattle having been hurried along the route Hinkee Dee pointed out, the animals themselves were not to be found, and none of the cowboys had the temerity to say, “I told you so,” to their superior.
“It’s mighty queer what becomes of the cattle,” said Dick Watson, as he was talking to the boys that night after the return of the unsuccessful search. “If them fellows had an airship I’d say they rode ’em off in that, for all trails, traces and clues seem to disappear at a certain point.”
“Tell us how this thing started,” begged Ned, and the foreman told the story of the losses to date. It was getting serious.