“Not much unless there was a reserve tank, and I don’t believe there was,” he answered. “We can find out for sure from Kramer, if he is able to talk.”
“Only a little.” Then followed a series of quick questions and answers, and finally Carl disconnected with a sigh of relief. “They discovered at Crofton that they can’t get the ranches up Cap Rock on the telephone and some line men are out looking for the trouble. Your father sent a message through from the Haurea place, sent it to the north station, and it was relayed back. They wanted to know what had happened to us.”
“I suppose our folks are on their way down,” Jim remarked, and he was mighty glad.
“Sure thing. The sheriff is going to broadcast about Gordon and have every plane watched. Too bad it wasn’t earlier in the day, but the landing field will turn on the search lights. It isn’t a dark night and if he has to come down for gas he’ll run the risk of getting picked up.” Carl put the instrument in the spacious pockets and they felt he had done a good job.
“I didn’t find a blame thing to eat, but I guess we can survive until someone comes. Say, Summers, I opened a queer hole, come and look at it,” Jim urged, so he led the way back to the paper-strewn section. They crawled through the opening and Carl stared in puzzled wonder.
“Great guns, I never saw a place like this before.” He tapped about the wall, but made no further discovery.
“What do you suppose it is?”
“Tell you what it might be—a hiding place. Before the blow-up, I looked behind those boards and even went into the second division. It was just another place for storing potatoes, or something like that—canned fruit perhaps,” Carl answered.
“What was this metal room used for? Bob’s mother has a closet for preserves in the cellar at the K-A and she has one on the Cross-Bar, but they’re just built-in places to keep things at an even heat, or cool, nothing like this,” Jim explained.
“Sure, I know, my mother has one. Tell you what, this is an old ranch, was settled by some of the first cowmen when the country was pretty wild. It might be that the owner had this in case of a raid, a place big enough to keep his wife and children, something like that—he might have wanted to keep them safe from Indians—”