“Not exactly, son. But Fred Gurney, one of our gang who ain’t here just now, got it from the agent over to the railroad depot that the feller took the seven-thirty train that night for Chicago.”
“He must have left Montana for good!” cried Roger. “Dave, I’m afraid you can whistle your forty-odd dollars good-bye.”
“So it would seem, Roger. It’s too bad! But I’m mighty glad Nick Jasniff has cleared out. I’d hate to think he was around here. He would be sure to try to do us some harm.”
“You might send on to Chicago and have him arrested on his arrival there,” suggested Frank Andrews. “That is, if he hasn’t gotten there already.”
“I don’t think it would be worth bothering about,” answered Dave. “It would make a lot of trouble all around; and maybe I would have to go on to Chicago to identify him, and then stay around and push the charge against him. I’d rather let him go and pocket my loss.”
“Maybe you’ll meet up with him some day,” suggested Pete Sine. “And if you do——Well, I know what I’d do to him,” and he tapped his pistol suggestively.
The other cowboys had listened with interest to the talk, and every one of them intimated that he had distrusted Nick Jasniff from the start. Evidently the fellow who had been in prison had not created a favorable impression, even though his hard-luck story had brought him some sympathy.
After this occurrence matters moved along quietly for a few days. On Sunday, there being no work to do, old John Hixon and several of the other men went out to look for the bobcat Dave had met on the trail. But though they spent several hours in beating around through the brushwood and the scrub timber, they failed to find the animal.
“Guess he got strayed away from his regular haunts, and then went back,” was Hixon’s comment. “Wild animals do that once in a while. I remember years ago an old hunter told me about a she bear he had met here in Montana. Some time later another hunter, a friend of his’n, told about meetin’ the same bear over in Wyoming. Then, less than a month later, this old hunter I first mentioned met the same bear and killed her. He always wondered how it was that bear got so far away from home and then got back again.”
On Monday morning came more letters from home, and also communications from Phil Lawrence, Ben Basswood and Shadow Hamilton. The letters from Crumville were, as usual, two communications from Laura and Jessie; and in each of these the girls mentioned the fact that Dave’s Uncle Dunston, as well as Mr. Wadsworth and Mr. Basswood, had had more trouble with the gypsies who had formerly occupied the vacant land on the outskirts of the town.