“There’s no use waiting here any longer for Perry,” the scout finished. “From the information you bring, Wild Bill, it seems certain that Perry is in the hands of the cattle barons, and is being held at Phelps’ place.”
“Ther onnery cattle dealers tried ter make a clean sweep,” put in Nomad. “They captered Dunbar, Perry an’ the gal. Through a piece o’ luck thet was some wonderful, ye managed ter help Dunbar. He’s at large, but the gal an’ her father aire still in the hands o’ ther enemy.”
“I’m terribly worried about Hattie and Dick,” said Jordan. “They’re fine people, and I’ve feared for a long while that something like this would happen. Benner is a man who believes that might makes right. He’s all-powerful on the Brazos, backed up as he is by Phelps and the other cattle barons. He can be as lawless as he pleases, and what law there is in this country will never touch him. The situation, gentlemen, is a sad commentary on our free institutions.”
“I reckon, pards,” observed Wild Bill, “that the girl is also at Phelps’.”
The scout nodded.
“That it seems to me,” he answered, “is where she would be taken. Both prisoners, I think, would be kept in the same place.”
“But,” went on Wild Bill, “these barons realize that they’re playing a risky game. Phelps understands that, anyhow, for he said so in that scrap of writing which Benner had in his watch.”
The scout knotted his forehead over a detail of the situation which he could not fathom.
“Why,” he queried, “should Phelps write that note and hand it to Benner? They were together in Hackamore. Why did Phelps put such stuff on paper when he could have told it to Benner?”
“It was private business, Buffalo Bill,” suggested the sky pilot dryly, “so private that the barons did not dare speak about it in Hackamore.”