“Just that,” was the reply, “and here, as sure as you live, there’s a message tied with a thread to his leg, right now. Why, somebody must have been experimenting sending a message back home by this air post.”
“Blast that old hawk, he spoiled the whole game!” muttered Jimmy, wrathfully.
“But stop and think, Jimmy,” Harry told him, “if it hadn’t been for the hawk you shot, we wouldn’t have known about this thing at all. But there’s Ned opening the little piece of tissue paper on which the message is written. Tell us about it, Ned, won’t you?”
The scout master was staring at the thin piece of paper he had smoothed out, as though it contained certain information that interested him deeply.
And as the other three scouts gathered around him, eagerly waiting until he took them more fully into his confidence, they seemed to feel as though the very air was charged with a fresh supply of mystery.
CHAPTER X.
AT DOUBLE CROSS RANCH.
The first words spoken by Ned added to the puzzle, for he turned to his chums and propounded a question.
“Did any of you happen to notice which way the pigeon was flying, before the hawk darted out from the trees and chased it?”
“Yes,” Jack informed him promptly, “I saw the bird coming away in the distance, and it was flying as straight as an arrow, when the hawk shot up out of the screen of the trees and made it swerve to try and escape; but it wasn’t quick enough.”
“Which way was it coming then?” asked Ned.