“Everyone watch him!” urged Tom.
Grace and Elfreda were following the flight with their glasses, but the keen eyes of the ranchers needed no such aid, and readily followed the flight until the bird had disappeared over a mountain.
“I got it!” shouted Sam.
“So hev I,” announced Pete. “Got the landmarks daid to rights. Be ye ready, Sam?”
Sam was, and after an uneasy half hour’s wait he rode off to the south, jogging along slowly. He was followed after an interval by Lieutenant Wingate, and following him were Tom Gray, Two-gun Pete and Idaho in the order named. Each man knew that he might expect to be shot from ambush, but the opportunity to meet up with the mountain ruffians outweighed all other considerations.
In a short time all were out of sight, and the party left at the ranch settled down to wait for the hour when they were to liberate another pigeon, and at the same time to listen with straining ears for the sound of firing in the hills, which each one momentarily expected to hear.
CHAPTER XVII
STACY DECIDES TO LEAVE
The night that Stacy Brown was roped from his mustang he was put to sleep with a whack applied to his head from the butt of a revolver. When he awakened he found himself lashed to the back of a pony, traveling over a rough mountain trail. The pony was being led and there were men ahead and men to the rear. The fat boy could hear them speak at intervals.
It did not seem to be a long journey, and the party finally pulled up before a cabin that Stacy observed was well hidden in a narrow rocky pass that was approached on three sides by way of a steep granite slope, while on the other side, as he later learned, a precipitous gorge dropped away for hundreds of feet.
The Overland boy was removed from the horse and carried to a lean-to against the rear of the cabin in which horse equipment and weapons were stored. He was unceremoniously dumped into this place and left to his own reflections. For some time he heard men talking in the cabin, then silence settled over the place. It was near noon of the following day before food was brought to him and his hands were freed. After eating he was subjected to a grilling examination as to who he was and what his party were doing in the Coso Valley, and when he answered in his characteristic independent way one of the ruffians struck him a blow in the face that once more put the Overland boy to sleep.