“They’re landing, too,” he thought with a thrill and a shudder. “I wonder where?”
CHAPTER III
A COLD SCENT
“Yep, they’re gone all right. Cleared out.” Drew Lane spoke in tones scarcely above a whisper. “Of course they may be just outside, for all we know.” His hand involuntarily strayed to his hip.
Johnny Thompson, Drew Lane and Tom Howe were still in Johnny’s tent. The adventures that were befalling Curlie Carson, for the moment, meant nothing to them. They were beyond earshot of it all. All unconscious of it, they were discussing their own affairs.
“I don’t think so.” Tom Howe, who seldom spoke, but whose actions spoke for him, broke the silence. “It’s my notion they have gone out for the big thing, whatever that is.”
“The big thing?” Johnny leaned forward eagerly.
“Sure,” Drew Lane broke in. “You don’t think such fellows as Greasy Thumb and his mob would come out here to run a tin horn gambler’s game, do you? Say! They’re supposed to be right next to the Big Shot.”
The Big Shot! Johnny was impressed. Who had not heard of the Big Shot, the man who headed the greatest beer running, gambling house operating gang of robbers the land has ever known?
“Yes,” said Tom Howe. “They’re after something big. But what it could be in a quiet little city like this is more than I can guess.”
Perhaps you have wondered how it came about that Drew Lane and Tom Howe, the successful young detectives of a great city’s force, were to be found in a small carnival city fifty miles from the bright lights of the greatest boulevard.