Mason smiled grimly.
“I’ve found out what I wanted to know and will act accordingly if it is true,” he said, backing slowly out of the room.
“Tell your precious master I will keep this little toy,” tapping the gun he was holding, “to remember him by, and also tell him I said the Masons are hard to drive.”
Reaching the door he dropped the gun in his pocket and mounting his horse rode slowly towards Trader’s Post. He breathed a sigh of relief when well out of sight of the ranch buildings.
“Well, this is a rum go,” he said softly to himself. “What will Josephine say when I tell her of my adventure. She’ll say right off quick that I need a guardian, and bawl me out for not waiting for her to take me to the ranch as she promised.”
Still, he was troubled over what he had heard, and made up his mind that if he didn’t get a letter from his father soon he would write him all about it, or better still, take a trip East to warn him that Ricker was a desperate character.
He was fast getting on to the ways of the West, and feeling the red blood flowing swiftly through his veins, he felt like getting into action on any trouble that might involve his father in peril.
He meant to take Josephine into his confidence as soon as he got home, and Scotty, too, whom he felt sure he could trust. Thus musing to himself he was covering ground at a slow canter.
Again his thoughts would travel Eastward to his old friends, and the hope of getting his car soon raised his spirits high. Then he remembered Roy Purvis to whom he had said good-bye just before he had started for the West.
Roy had been a keen and enthusiastic automobile racer along with Mason, and had just gone in for aviation. He had several bad spills in learning, but was keener for flying than he ever had been for automobile racing. He had laughingly made the remark to Mason that he might expect a birdman to visit him in his chosen god-forsaken country.