“Maybe he stumbled and fell,” Roy suggested. “We’ll have to go back. Leave the broncs—no, we’d better tie ’em close to the fire where we can watch ’em.”
They untied the horses and led them slowly toward the campfire. They fastened the animals about ten yards from it.
“Silent,” Teddy called again. “Hey, Silent!”
“If he hit his head and knocked himself cold, he’s lyin’ around here,” Nick said. “He yelled to me an’ I saw him go for the bushes, an’ that’s the last. You don’t think—” he paused suggestively.
“Well, they didn’t shoot him, that’s sure,” Roy declared. “We’d have heard the shot. And I don’t think they knifed him, because something tells me Silent could take care of himself in a game of that sort.”
“But what in thunder happened?” Teddy exclaimed impatiently. “He’s gone, hasn’t he?”
“He’ll come back,” Roy declared with a confidence he did not feel. “In the meantime—” he stopped and picked up the stone. Breaking the string that held the paper to it, he glanced down. Teddy heard him give a grunt.
“What is it?”
“Here—bring it to the fire, so you can see. What do they think we are? Kids, to be scared by a thing like that?”
Holding the paper so the firelight flickered upon it, Teddy and Nick, who leaned over his shoulder, read two words, printed: