“That’ll be fine. I expect they’ll wait for yuh to show up.”
“Who do yuh reckon set off the dynamite?” asked Hank North. “We heard that blast plumb down in Medicine Tree.”
“I heard it here,” said Jim Kelton. “It was like thunder.”
“I should think they might have heard it in Europe,” laughed Jane, hugging her father again, before she went to her room to doctor her feet.
“Mr. Collins will stay here to-night, dad,” she said. “He needs some patching, too.”
“He sure does and will,” said her father.
The men accepted the food that the cook had been preparing, laughed over their coffee which had been prepared to cheer them on their search of Padre Canyon, and headed for town in far better spirits than they had when they came to the ranch.
“What is yore verdict, Collins?” asked Jim Kelton, when they sat alone in the living-room.
“Somebody has decided to put me out of the way,” smiled Cultus. “They almost made good to-day. They knew I liked Blaze Nolan, so they used him as the bait for their trap. We got out mighty lucky. In fact, we’re luckier than you can imagine. The stage was all set for a killin’, but somethin’ went wrong.”
“Why put you out of the way, Collins?”