A NEW ARRIVAL
After the disappearance of Jarley Bangs the Rover boys and their chums continued their trip on horseback.
“Let’s move over the hill in the direction of the Bimbel ranch,” suggested Spouter. “I’d like to get a bird’s-eye view of that outfit.”
“Perhaps we had better not go too close,” advised Fred. “Bimbel may be getting out a shotgun for us.”
“I guess it isn’t as bad as all that, Fred. Those things might have happened years ago when the country was more sparsely settled and when there were more bad men around. I don’t take much stock in what Bangs said. Probably he and Bimbel have quarreled. He struck me as being a man who could get into a dispute very easily.”
“Oh, I was only fooling,” answered Fred. “I wouldn’t be afraid to ride right up to his door. That is, in the daytime. Of course, if we did it at night he might become suspicious.”
“Say, do you fellows know that it’s five minutes to twelve?” questioned Andy, after consulting his watch. “I move that we keep our eyes open for some place where we can take it easy and have lunch.”
“And I second the commotion,” returned his brother, joking in a way their father had made familiar to them.
The boys rode on for half an hour longer, and then reached the top of the hill they were ascending. Here they could look a long distance in all directions.
“Some view, I’ll say,” declared Jack, as he surveyed the panorama. “What a picture for an artist to paint!” and he pointed to the majestic mountains to the westward.