“Now then, son,” he said, with the faintest trace of triumph in his voice, “yer see that this here hell-io-what-you-may-call ’em, ain’t ther only trick in the plainsman’s bag. By raising and lowering that coat you kin talk in your Remorse thing as long as you like.”
“Pete, I take off my hat to you,” exclaimed Jack, feeling ashamed of the rather superior manner he had assumed when talking of the heliograph a while before.
“That’s all right, son. But take it frum yer Uncle Dudley that we none of us know everything. Thar’s things you kin larn from an Injun, jus’ as I larned how ter git that fire a-goin’.”
Kneeling by the smoldering smoke-pile, Jack raised and lowered the coat at long and short intervals, forming a species of smoke telegraphy easily readable by anyone who understood the Morse code.
An hour of anxious waiting followed and then upon the scene galloped at top speed the rest of the adventurers bearing with them some food, scanty but welcome, and best of all, the ponies and one rifle.
CHAPTER IX.
THE LONE RANCHO.
Well, that was an odd meal, that refection of water-soaked biscuit and canned corned beef, with flood water as a beverage. Perhaps in all the adventures of the Border Boys, when in after years they came to recall them, no scene stood out quite so strikingly.