CHAPTER VI
NEWS FROM HOME
“He’s mad clean through, that’s certain,” remarked Roger, as he and Dave hurried out of the office to watch Nick Jasniff gallop away down the road leading from the construction camp.
“Yes. And I’ve no doubt but he’ll do his best to make trouble for us,” replied Dave seriously. “It’s too bad! I thought we were done with that fellow forever.”
“Do you suppose he really has a job at the Double Eight Ranch?” queried the senator’s son, after a pause, during which they noted Jasniff’s disappearance around a bend of the trail.
“He must be working somewhere. Or else somebody has supplied him with funds. He can’t live on nothing.”
“Perhaps he got his funds as he got those stolen jewels, Dave.”
“That might be true too. They say very few men reform after they have once been in prison.”
“Let us ask some of the others about this Double Eight Ranch.”
This suggestion was considered a good one, and during the next few days they made a number of inquiries concerning the ranch in question, and learned that it was a large place located in a fertile valley about twenty miles away. It was owned by a syndicate of Western capitalists and was under the management of a man named James Dackley. The ranch employed about a dozen experienced cowboys and an equal number of assistants.
“If Nick Jasniff works there it must be simply as an assistant, since he knows little about a cowboy’s duties,” was Dave’s comment.