CHAPTER II
THE MYSTERY OF THE HAMMERING
“Don’t stop and make too many poems about the valleys, Poodle,” commanded Hike Griffin, after breakfast.
“Star of the gridiron, I ain’t making po’ms. I’m beating the job and getting in a loaf on you,” Poodle Darby assured him, as, with chin in hand, he looked across the wonderful green hills stretched far below the peak where they had camped all night. “Say, I’ve been listening for that duffer that was pounding iron so late, and I thought I heard him, over there to the sou’-sou’-east.”
“You’ve got a great little ole brain, Pood’. You hit it right. Us for the mystery of the hammering. Probably a stray bunch of cattlemen, riding the ranges. Probably shoeing their horses. Peaceful as pie.”
“Yuh,” grinned Poodle. “Think it’s counterfeiters?”
“Yes. ’S matter of fact, I do.” Hike was very quiet about it, but Poodle looked up admiringly. The young captain of the Freshman football team acted as though he meant very busy business.
Leaving their horses tethered, and their food cached, except for a little bacon, tea, and rice, they scrambled down an arroyo, crawled down a rock-face, with fingers and toes clinging to ledges, and reached a long slope covered with thick chaparral, through which Hike forced a way, with Poodle cheerfully trotting after him. They reached the beginning of the mile-broad valley which they had noticed the night before. A small hill separated it from them. As they started to mount this hill, on the other side of it sounded a clatter and banging, as though a giant blacksmith shop were in operation.
“Hssshhhh!” came from Hike, as Poodle started to exclaim. Up the hill swung Hike, his shoulders low, making himself as small as he could, but with his long slender legs going like propeller-blades on a motor boat. At the top Hike crouched down; then held up his hands and said—still peering across the crest—“Well, I’ll be everlastingly hornswoggled.”
Poodle always had to talk about something. Though he was wild with desire to see what there was on the other side, he stopped, shook his chubby forefinger at Hike, and said in the tones of the headmaster at Santa Benicia Academy, “Griffin, this is shocking. What words! What wick-ed, lit-tle wor-dies!”
“Choke yourself to death and come here,” retorted Hike, and Poodle crawled up beside him. He saw, in a grassy hollow opening on the broad valley, a long, high, wide shed, like a cow stable ten times enlarged. Beside it was a forge with a pile of metal—pistons and bolts and motor-wheels; and spread out on the grass was something like a big box-kite slightly twisted. Not a person was in sight.