“Right over there lies Thunder Canyon,” Mr. Manley declared, and pointed.
Ike Natick grunted.
“I know it, boss. An’ that’s the place I mean. Somewhere in there you’ll find those girl-stealin’ gunmen.”
“Yea?” Mr. Manley looked at him sharply. “What makes you so sure, Natick?”
“I ain’t sure, boss; but I got a hunch. An’ my hunches usually turn out pretty good. Besides that, it wasn’t so far from here that I saw the car comin’ this way. Don’t that road to the 8 X 8 wind past those hills over there?”
“That’s what,” Pop Burns, who was listening, answered. “She runs right past them hills.”
“Then I’m sure right,” Ike Natick drawled. “That auto come into this here canyon. Course, they may have switched to horses later, ’cause the ground around here ain’t none too good fer a car. I don’t know nothin’ about that. But you hear me, boss, an’ head fer that there cut.”
Pete Ball turned to Mr. Manley.
“I think he knows what he’s talking about, Bardwell,” he said in a low voice. “Ike hasn’t been with me long, but I’ve found he’s a born puncher, an’ he sure knows the West. I’m in favor of takin’ his advice an’ searchin’ that gorge.”
For a moment the owner of the X Bar X ranch sat silent, thinking. He took his corncob pipe from his shirt pocket and stuck it, unlit, between his teeth.