“No,” answered the leader. “We didn’t. Why, did you lose somebody?”
“It’s a case of kidnaping,” Tinny answered, and he told briefly what had happened.
“Those fellows sure had their nerve with them!” was the general opinion of the prospectors, and to this the searching party agreed.
They kept on, making several inquiries at different places, but getting no clews until nearly noon. By that time they had found the trail so rough that it was a risk to take the automobile over it in certain places, and they had been obliged to creep along in low gear.
“This isn’t doing my new car any great amount of good,” decided Tinny. “I think we’d better stop when we get to Nolan’s Pass and leave the machine there. We’ll hire horses. They’ll be better and quicker, though not quite so comfortable.”
It was at Nolan’s Pass, a small mining town, that they got the first definite clews since the information given by Professor Snodgrass.
“Say, I think I know the fellows you mean,” said Jake Stout, to whom they applied for horses. “Did one of them have a queer squint in his left eye?”
“That was Dolt Haven!” exclaimed Ned.
“Well, he and another chap, who was very bossy, came in here late yesterday afternoon and wanted to know if I would buy a wagon from them,” went on Jake, who, in contrast to his robust name, was a thin, wizened specimen of a man. “They wanted to trade the wagon in toward the hire of some horses.”
“Did you see the wagon?” asked Tinny.