“The gods are gone, professor,” he stated, disconsolately. “Clean gone! Aye. D’ye see, the thief, that fellow camped by the creek, was the same Indian who got wiped out by Doniphan’s flivver this morning! The same, aye. That saddle blanket was gray, and that horse had the off hind foot cracked. Aye. The Navaho dog was the thief. And now the gods are clean gone! There was no sign of ’em about the horse, and the man himself had nothing. But he took ’em, right enough.”
The professor glanced up, roused from his abstraction.
“That’s queer!” he ejaculated. Excitement rapidly grew upon him. “Look here, Mackintavers! The man who was here this afternoon, the man Shea—did you notice that queer little grip on his buckboard? He told me he had picked up that grip near the crippled horse, and he did not know what was in it!”
Just then Abel Dorales returned, to find that Thady Shea had come and gone.
Thirty minutes later Mackintavers and Dorales were on their way to Magdalena in the big car; Mackintavers was after the seven stone gods, and Dorales was after Thady Shea.
CHAPTER XIII—THADY SHEA STARTS HOME
In the early evening Thady Shea reached Magdalena. He turned in his team and buckboard to the livery stable, paid for its use from the money given him by Fred Ross, and with the little suitcase in his hand left the stable office. The first person he encountered was Fred Ross.
“Hello!” said Ross, grinning. “Thought maybe you’d show up this evenin’, so I hung around. How’s tricks?”
“Fine,” answered Shea, delightedly. “I’m hungry.”
“So’m I. Let’s eat. I got a friend waitin’ to meet ye—he’s leavin’ to-night.”