"What good would that do him, Lanky? Though perhaps he might hope to find a chance to steal that map while the men were all rushing after the stampeding ponies. But we'll try to look out for that sort of game. Come on!"
The chums crept outside. One thing Frank Allen had already noticed that seemed to be in their favor—the rear part of the house was in shadow. Even the keenest of eyes could not discover that the kitchen door had opened to give egress to a couple of bent-over figures.
"See him still?" asked Lanky eagerly.
"He ducked into that bunch of cottonwoods over there," Frank informed him. "Just the same, you must remember that the corral lies at the far end of that patch of woods. Now for some scout work! And it'll pay us to keep as close to the ground as we can."
"Whee! hope we don't run across any rattlers out here, Frank?"
"No danger," whiffed the other over his shoulder, for he was advancing steadily and cautiously; "those who ought to know say that snakes never move around during the night."
A soft sound like escaping steam told how greatly relieved Lanky felt; for from early childhood his one horror had been serpents of any kind. He had even been known to make a wry face when impaling an angleworm on his hook, as if it reminded him of his pet aversion.
Frank stuck to his original belief that the mysterious prowler was heading for the horse corral, and he shaped his course so as to come upon this fenced-in enclosure somewhere near the gate.
The stockade was of such a height that even a prize jumper among the broncos could never get its forelegs across the upper bar. Besides this, in order to further insure the safekeeping of the restless ponies, a hedge of thorny Osage orange had been cultivated, the mature trees giving the animals considerable shelter from the scorching rays of an August sun.
Every dozen feet or so Frank would come to a pause, and at such times seemed to be using both eyes and ears to discover any unusual movement or sound around the corral.