“What do you think of it?” Phil asked of Mr. Denby.
“If you are referring to the clue,” answered the professor, “I think it’s a good one. Certainly it is one that you can’t afford to disregard. Detectives have traveled across a continent on much less than that. Of course, he may not prove to be the man, but there’s at least a good chance that he is. Nothing venture, nothing have.
“As to what he says about you boys going down there yourselves and trying to round the man up,” he continued, “that of course, is a matter on which I wouldn’t venture an opinion. Your families,” he smiled, “may have decided views on that point.”
“I suppose they might,” agreed Phil somewhat dismally. “Still they let us go before in that matter of running down the counterfeiters, which was quite as dangerous as this if not more so. And you’ll notice that we came through that all right.”
“Yes,” agreed the professor, “but you have to admit that you had some mighty close shaves when there was only a slender margin between you and death. Your folks may think that there’s such a thing as tempting Fate, you know.”
“But just to think of it,” mused Phil. “Those Texas plains, the Rio Grande, the free wild life—”
“Sleeping under the stars,” interrupted Tom, “mixing it with the greasers—”
“And above all, nabbing that scoundrel who shot my father,” put in Dick. “Fellows, there’s no two ways about it. We’ve just got to go.”
“Seems to be unanimous,” remarked the professor looking around with a smile at the eager, ardent faces, “but all the same it will bear a lot of thinking over. Better call up your friend again and see just what he has in mind.”
Phil complied with the suggestion, his words fairly tumbling over each other in his eagerness.