"Yes, they are surely brother and sister," Ross decided, his gaze fixed critically on Leslie’s downcast face. "They look tremendously alike."
"Veston, he vas de man dot Doc here mended," Weimer volunteered. "Doc vas at Dry Creek mit Veston."
Leslie glanced quickly across the table. "Not the man who was there when I passed through–the day I was with Wilson–not that one, Ross?"
"The same," nodded Ross. "He’s the Lon Weston that I know."
"Then he isn’t the Lon Weston that I know," said Leslie with conviction and also relief. "That man at Dry Creek had dark hair, while the ranch foreman had hair as light almost as Sandy’s. Not the same at all."
And because of the note at "The Irma," Ross did not contradict Leslie, did not tell him that Weston’s hair was still light beneath its dye of chestnut brown.
"But some day," he thought, "I can ask him about the fourth man that his father is after, and so find out about Weston in a roundabout way."
But the search for the dynamite soon proved so strenuous that all thought of the crime committed on the North Fork faded from Ross’s mind. Day after day the boys continued the search while Weimer stayed in the cabin "rustling grub" and giving suggestions. The theft of the sticks seemed to have shocked the man into something of his former mental keenness and industry. Not once did Ross have to urge him to his household tasks. When the boys tramped into the cabin at noon or long after darkness had fallen, they found a hearty appetizing meal prepared, the cook even going to the length of objecting to their washing the dishes.
"If you dem sticks find," he would say, "Ich vill stay mit dese dishes."
"Uncle Jake," exclaimed Ross at noon the third day of the hunt, "I’m discouraged. We have poked into every spot for miles around where such a lot of dynamite could be hidden–and then have gone again."