"Huh! Not such a terrible mystery, after all," sniffed Curley contemptuously.
"How came that underground passage there? What's it for?" asked Big-foot.
"Probably dug out in Indian times. I'll bet it has saved the scalp of more than one old fellow. There's an opening into it from the church somewhere, you can depend upon that. I'm thinking, too, that the well was a bluff—that it wasn't intended for water at all. We'll smash the mystery of the adobe church before we pull out of here to-morrow, see if we don't."
"I come mighty near doing for one of them," added Big-foot Sanders ruefully.
"Got anything to eat?" interrupted Stacy Brown.
"For goodness' sake, boys, take your fat friend over to the chuck wagon and fill him up. He's like a Mexican steer—he'll bed down safer when he's full of supper."
In the meantime, another scene was being enacted off at the Ox Bow ranch—a scene that was to add still another chapter to the romance of the trail.
Tad Butler was sitting alone in the darkness on the steps of the McClure mansion. The boy, chin in hands, was lost in thought. Stallings had carried Ruth Brayton in his arms all the way to the ranch where she had soon revived.
After leaving her, the foreman and Colonel McClure had locked themselves in the library, where they remained in consultation for more than an hour.