In running his hands over the man’s person Adrian happened to draw out what seemed to be an old and much used notebook. He opened the same in idle curiosity, and hardly had he done so than Billie gave a whoop.
“Oh! look, would you, fellows?” he cried; “don’t you see several pages have been torn out right here? Wait a minute, Adrian, and watch me fit them two warnings we got to the torn edges of the balance of the pages. There, they match like magic! Don’t you see, it was him that kept watching over us all the time—only for Tod Harkness we might have drunk some of that poisoned water at the spring; if he hadn’t seen that Injun sneaking up and wounded him, who knows what would have happened to us; and last but not least, he
let us know about that measly game the showman Braddon was putting up on us. Now the mystery is all clear. It was only poor old Tod Harkness atrying to pay back the debt he thought he owed me, because I helped him that time!”
The three Broncho Rider Boys stood there by the side of the slowly recovering border desperado, and stared at each other. It was almost too strange to believe, but they had all the evidence necessary in that soiled notebook, with the two warning notes fitting snugly in the torn places.
“Well, after this,” said Donald, slowly and earnestly, “I’m never going to believe any man is all bad. Even Tod Harkness has human feelings; and if he had had a home like mine perhaps he’d have been a good man today. I only hope he’s found it so fine to be doing decent things, that he’ll keep it up after this. If I thought so, I’d even try and get dad to give him a job at the Keystone.”
And strange to say, that was what really came about; for Tod, after he had come back to his senses, told them he was determined to turn over a new leaf, and gladly accepted the chance to get employment under a man so highly respected as Mr. Mackay.
As he will probably never be heard of again in these stories it may only be right and proper to say here and now that Tod did make good. The little seed sown by honest Billie on that occasion when he
assisted the desperado, had been working over-time in the brain of the man, with the result that his regeneration was brought about. While he had meant to hover around, and be of some assistance to Billie, Tod had not wanted his identity to be known, and on that account he kept in the background while at the Zuni village, which accounted for their not having seen anything of him.
“Everything has now been cleared up,” remarked Donald, as they sat around their camp-fire that same evening, Tod being one of the number, a quiet man who had begun to think, for possibly the first time in his whole life, and was very grateful to these lads, not only for saving his life, but for promising to give him a chance to redeem his bad past.
“Yes, and there’s nothing now to keep me from heading north, after we get back to Keystone Ranch,” added Adrian. “I’m thinking of my place up there most all the time now; and it seems like I couldn’t keep back any longer. I must know the truth about what my uncle is doing there. If he’s acting square by me I want to forget I ever felt uneasy; and on the other hand, if there is any crooked work going on, which would account for the poor returns I’ve had of late years, why the sooner I make a change in my manager the better.”