“He did,” answered Archie. “As I understand it, these Pikes are one of the results of our late war. A good many of the people in the border states were completely broken up, their houses being burned, their crops destroyed and their stock killed or driven off. It takes time and patience to accumulate property by farming, and it is hard for a man to begin over again where he began twenty or forty years ago. There are not many who have the courage to do it. These people had heard wonderful stories of the mines and the sudden fortunes sometimes made there, and believing that since they had to dig in the ground for a living, it would be easier to dig gold and silver than potatoes, they emigrated by regiments. But where one family made a permanent settlement in California, a dozen turned back. But still some of them were not satisfied, and after staying a year or two in their old homes, they would bundle up again and go back to California; and from roaming about so much, they fell into the habit of leading a wandering, gipsy life. They are not satisfied with a permanent settlement anywhere. How the name they bear came to be applied to them I don’t know, unless it was because the first of them came from Pike county, Missouri. This man is a genuine Pike. There is no telling how many times he has wandered back and forth over these prairies, but he hasn’t learned much during his wanderings. I have crossed the prairie only once, and I know that he is a hundred miles north of where he belongs.”
“Well, now, hasn’t it occurred to you—” said Eugene, looking over his shoulder to make sure that there was no one listening; “by the way, what do you think of them, any how?”
“I think there is one crazy man in that party, and two, and perhaps three, villains.”
Eugene reached out his hand and gave Archie an approving slap on the back, as if to say that he had given utterance to his own ideas on that point.
“The old man talks sensibly enough about some things,” said he, “but he is wild on the subject of money, and has an eye that you don’t see belonging to a person whose head is perfectly level. Now hasn’t it struck you——”
“That those two hunters are leading him out of his way for some purpose of their own?” added Archie, when Eugene paused. “It has, and I believe it.”
“But what is their object?”
“You tell. There’s nothing in those wagons worth stealing, I am sure. Hold on; here comes one of them.”
Simon Cool was approaching. When he came up he stated his business without ceremony.