When Frank awoke again it was broad day. He no longer was troubled with that dizzy feeling; and yet it seemed to him as though a weight might be pressing down upon him. The air was unusually bracing on this particular morning, too, so that Frank did not know what to make of it.
Not being a boy given to such a things as the “blues,” he shook himself with the intention of getting rid of this feeling and sternly put it out of his mind.
They went outdoors to take a look around, while waiting for Charley Woo to call them to breakfast. He was already up and doing, as the smoke from the kitchen chimney told. Indeed, there was an unmistakable smell of cooking in the air that caused Andy to sniff eagerly, and remark:
“Tell me, don’t that coffee smell fine; and as sure as you live, Charley Woo is going to give us a mess of his famous flapjacks, too. When we go away from here, Frank, we’ll have to send that Chink something nice, to pay him for all he’s done to make us happy while on the ranch. I really think Charlie’d lie awake all night hatching up some new mess to tickle us with. Uncle struck a treasure when that moon-eyed Celestial came wandering along here looking for a berth, when the tough punchers of the M-bar-M outfit chased him off because he let a hair from his queue get in the soup.”
Presently the call came for breakfast, and the boys hurried in to attack the eggs and bacon and pancakes that were spread before them; together with butter, rolls, coffee, and genuine maple syrup, of which latter article the ranchman was very fond.
They wondered a little that Mrs. Ogden was not with them, but all the same proceeded to do full justice to Charley Woo’s cooking. The grinning Chinaman waited on them with his customary agility, almost anticipating their wants, and insisting on piling more flapjacks on their plates as fast as they were emptied, until both boys had to hold their hands over them and vow that they could not devour another one for love or money.
“Suppose you go and knock on Mrs. Ogden’s door at the other end of the house, and tell her the cakes will get cold is she doesn’t come quick,” suggested Andy.
“Yes, I never knew her to be sleeping in so, since we’ve been here,” added Frank, and yet as Charley Woo, who could make himself handy about the house in the capacity of a man of all work as well as chef, hurried off to carry out the suggestion, neither of the boys had the slightest suspicion that anything out of the way was the matter.
The first thing they knew about trouble was when they heard the Chinaman shouting in a wild fashion; and jumping up, regardless of the heavy meal they had just devoured, they ran through the passage to where the sound came from, their hearts almost standing still with sudden apprehension, they knew not what of.
The outer door of the two rooms which were occupied by the housekeeper and little blue-eyed Becky was open, and as Frank and Andy burst through impetuously, they saw Charley Woo, trying to unwind some pieces of rope which had evidently been used to bind Mrs. Ogden to the bed posts. A towel with which she had possibly been gagged lay on the floor. The poor woman was in her wrapper, and so completely exhausted that she could hardly make a sound. But evidently she wanted to tell them something important, for her lips kept on moving; and Frank, bending down managed to catch the sense of the whispered sounds.