"Hackberry, you remember, wanted him to get a horse and ride cross country."
"But Matt told Hackberry he expected to reach Sykestown by train. Because of that, no matter what the plans of Murgatroyd and his men were, they'd have to give over their designs and lay for Matt somewhere between here and the Traquair homestead."
"That's where you're shy some more," said McGlory. "Hackberry, coming on horseback from Minnewaukon, hasn't got to where Murg is, yet, so he can't have told him what Matt was expecting to do. Take it from me, Cameron, there was a gang on that cross-country road, last night, layin' for our pard."
"Well, if there was," returned Cameron easily, "then Motor Matt sailed over their heads. But all this is mere guesswork," he added, "and mighty poor guesswork, at that. We'll just wait here until Matt shows up."
There was a silence for a while, Ping getting a crick in his neck holding his head back and watching the sky toward the north and east.
"No makee see Cloud Joss," he murmured.
Neither McGlory nor Cameron paid much attention to the report. If Matt had been coming in the aëroplane the excitement in the town would quickly have apprised them of the fact.
"I can't understand," said Cameron musingly, "what this Murgatroyd hopes to accomplish by all this criminal work."
"You can't?" echoed McGlory. "Well, Matt butted into Murgatroyd's game and knocked his villainous schemes galley-west. That don't make Murg feel anyways good, does it? Then there's Siwash Charley. He's a tinhorn and mucho malo, and there's no love lost between him and the king of the motor boys. What's the result if Murg and Siwash get Matt in their clutches?" The cowboy scowled and ground his teeth. "You ought to be able to figure that out, Cameron, just as well as I can."
"Murgatroyd isn't anybody's fool," said Cameron. "He's not going to go to any desperate length with Matt and run his neck into a noose."