They found Mr. Comstock moving about briskly, as though determined that there should not be a screw loose in the plan of campaign if it depended on eternal vigilance on his part.
Of course Adrian felt it his duty to tell him all about Billie’s latest adventure, and Uncle Fred expressed himself as filled with admiration in connection with the splendid work accomplished by the stout chum.
“He’s a dandy, that Billie is!” he went on to say, energetically; “and you’d never think it, to look at his build. Why, he made the neatest getaway awhile back that I ever set eyes on. Yes, I know all about that little knothole in the board partition. It really looks into my office, you see, and on several occasions
I’ve hired Charley Moo to listen there when Mrs. Comstock had sent for one of the men to report to her; because I knew it must be something in connection with another raid on the stock.”
“Now,” Adrian went on to say, when the other paused, “we’ve been talking it over, and both Donald and myself agreed with an idea Billie happened to put out as a feeler.”
“As to what?” demanded the ex-manager of the ranch, eagerly.
“Here are four punchers around,” continued the boy, steadily, “who not only don’t mean to stand up with us and be counted, when trouble heads this way; but they’re only looking for a chance to do us a bad turn. Now, we thought that it’d be a good thing if the whole four suspects could be tied, neck and heels, and kept prisoners until the sheriff comes.”
Mr. Comstock rubbed his hands together as though pleased with the idea.
“That hits pretty close to the bull’s-eye, let me tell you, son,” he observed. “I say it’s a good thing, and we’ll carry it out; that is, unless the sneaky coyotes get wind of our intentions, and slope meanwhile. If they do clear out why it’s a good riddance of bad rubbish, and we’ll shake hands on seeing the last of the lot. I wouldn’t cry my eyes out, and that’s a fact, if some other person, who shall be nameless, took a similar notion to desert my bed and board, and go back to her own
kith and kin. Fact is, I’d be ready to sing hallelujah, and dance a hornpipe. But that’d be too good luck for me, I’m afraid. I was done, good and hard, but the law spliced us, and I have too great a respect for law to try and break the bonds through the courts—though running away is a different thing.”