“Oh! You paid for it,” nodded the passenger.
“I did not. Captain Gray did. You see it was this way. The captain paid for six cans of baked beans, but they gave him only five cans. The colored gentleman in the diner cheated us out of one can, and probably pocketed the difference, so I sort of helped myself to a pudding to even things up.”
“Humph! You are a young man of unusual ability. You should have been a lawyer.”
“I know it,” admitted Chunky.
An exclamation from Ford interrupted the conversation. The sheriff had picked up a handkerchief which Tom thought belonged to Hippy Wingate. They believed that the lieutenant had dropped it purposely, knowing full well that pursuit would follow promptly when his friends discovered that he was missing.
“We are on the trail all right,” cried the sheriff. “Look sharp and don’t make much noise about it, either.”
Daybreak found the outfit still in the saddle. Now that they could see, Ford threw away the lantern, and, after watering their ponies at a mountain spring, they pressed on with all speed. The men ate a cold breakfast in the saddle, there being no time to waste in halting to cook breakfast. Further, the smoke from a camp-fire would be a danger signal to the men for whom they were searching.
About nine o’clock in the morning the sheriff and Tom found a split-trail. The two trails led up a steep incline to a small plateau. There they discovered the remains of a camp-fire. Ford dismounted and ran his fingers through the ashes.
“There has been a fire here within a few hours,” he announced.
“And the trail has gone to pieces,” added Stacy Brown who had got down from his pony and begun nosing about.