"A little bit!" repeated the stranger ironically; "it looks to me like a whole lot."
"This is the Mountain House, is it?" went on Matt. He was severely shocked himself, but tried manfully to hide it while trying to work out the mystery.
"Certainly, sir," growled the man with the golf stick. "Don't you try to make game of me, young man! I'm old enough to be your father, and such——"
"We are not trying to make game of any one," protested Matt.
"But somebody is making game of us," put in McGlory, "and playing us up and down and all across the table. Here in these hills is where Rip Van Winkle went to sleep, ain't it? I wonder if he dreamed about fat Chinamen, yellow cords, one-eyed sailors, and——"
"Cut it out, Joe!" whispered Matt sternly, grabbing his chum by the arm and pulling him toward the hotel. "Can't you see he thinks we're crazy?"
"Thinks we're crazy?" stuttered the cowboy. "Then I've got a cinch on him, for I know we are. Where next?"
"We'll go into the hotel and make some inquiries," replied Matt, noting how the man with the cigar and the golf stick turned in his chair to keep an eye on them. "And for Heaven's sake, Joe," Matt added, "let me do the talking. If you don't, we're liable to be locked up."
"We ought to be locked up," mumbled McGlory. "We're lost, and we ought to be shooed into some safe corral and kept there till we find ourselves. Sufferin' hurricanes! What kind of a brain-storm are we going through, anyhow?"
Matt and McGlory passed through the chattering groups on the porch and entered the lobby of the hotel. The music, which now came to them in increased volume, was accompanied by a clatter of dishes from the dining room. Matt laid a direct course for the counter at one side of the lobby.