“Why?” asked Ned.
“Well,” said Tom, “we’ve got to pick out some place to begin, and that’s probably as good as any other. Then, too, I have some curiosity to see what Hankinshaw and his brother snakes are doing.”
“Whom they’re doing, you mean,” suggested Ned.
“I suppose that would be more correct,” said Tom with a smile. “What I’m thinking of especially is that old blind man that Mr. Damon told us about. You remember, don’t you, that he said that the Hankinshaw crowd were out to swindle him out of his property? Perhaps we can put a spoke in their wheel.”
Ned groaned.
“Great Scott, Tom!” he exclaimed. “Can’t you stick to business and stop looking for trouble?”
CHAPTER XV
OFF FOR THE OIL FIELDS
Tom grinned at the earnestness in Ned’s tone.
“Don’t be worried, old boy,” he said. “We’ll give all the attention to business that it needs. But if on the side we can at the same time help an old fellow along, why shouldn’t we? But that’s a matter that we can settle when we come to it. All we have to do now is to get ready for the trip.”
Before he left for Texas, Tom went up again to the hospital to get news of the young aviator.