“So he was,” said Joe.
Just then the clerk passed around behind the counter. He looked at Ned as he went by, but did not act as though he had ever seen him before.
“Mr. Clerk,” said the owner of the stolen horse, for it was he, “who is this Edward Ackerman?”
“Don’t know’ him,” answered the clerk. “He’s a stranger.”
“What sort of a looking fellow is he?”
“O, he’s roughly dressed, and looks as though he might be a cow-boy!”
“That doesn’t answer the description, but we might have a peep at him if he is in his room. Show us up, will you?”
The clerk sounded his signal-bell, and when the boy came up in answer to it, he was commanded to show the gentlemen up to number thirty-three. Ned watched them as they followed the boy up the stairs, and then left the counter and went out on the street. He would have been glad to give up the key of his room and send for his valise, which contained the rest of the clothing he had just purchased, but he could do neither without exposing himself on the spot.
“Am I never going to see the last of those men?” thought Ned, as he hurried along, turning every corner he came to, as if he hoped in that way, to leave his pursuers behind for ever. “I can’t stay at that hotel if they are going to stop there. I wish father would hurry up. I shall be in danger as long as I am in this town.”
Ned found a second-rate hotel, after a few minutes’ walk, and concluded to stop there. Profiting by his past experience, he signed a fictitious name to the register, and then settled down to wait as patiently as he could for his father’s arrival. He waited almost a week, and was beginning to fear that he would never come, when one day, to his great delight, he met him on the street. Ned’s first act was to relate the particulars of his two adventures with the ranchemen, and to take his father to task for not settling the matter with them. He never said a word about his cousin’s capture or Gus Robbins’s sudden disappearance, for those little incidents were of no consequence whatever.