“How’dy, folks,” greeted Jim. “Ain’t seen ye fer a week o’ Sundays. Ye see that no ’count pard o’ mine got his’n,” he chuckled, nodding at Sam, whose head was still swathed in bandages.
“Yes, but what happened to you?” questioned Emma. “It would appear that you too got something.”
Jim explained that he had been roped from his pony, carried into the mountains and secreted in a cave where the pigeon cotes were located. It was the wire-covered pigeon-yard just outside of the cave, well masked with foliage, that the Overland men and the ranchers, in their hunt for Jim, had stumbled upon, and that led to finding the missing guide. That was where the outlaws caught them, and, had not the men from the ranch been on the alert, would have made a quick finish of them.
Tom told the Overlanders of Sam’s battle with the rustlers in the mountain cabin, of the further search for Jim, and of the culminating experience when a running battle with the rustlers was engaged in.
“Stacy!” cried Nora in sudden recollection. In the excitement of that memorable morning she had forgotten about the fat boy.
“He got away the night we come up heah,” Sam Conifer informed her. “I reckons he’s got home afore this, an’ that he’ll stay thar. They was goin’ to drop him into Red Gulch, an’ I reckon he thought it war time to leave.”
At this juncture, Miss Briggs asked permission to look at the wounds of the party. Sam’s wounds were doing well, but needed professional care, which Elfreda gave to them on the spot. She next dressed Idaho Jones’ arm, which was bleeding from a bullet wound. Barring a few slight flesh wounds where bullets had narrowly missed doing serious injury, the other fighters were unharmed.
“You now have the whole story,” announced Tom Gray, as she finished. “The rustlers, thanks to their own carelessness, have taken a bad job out of our hands.”
“What a terrible death!” breathed Grace. “What about these?” she added, pointing to Mexican Charlie and Malcolm Hornby. “Shall I consult Judy about—about her fa—about Hornby?”
Tom shook his head.