“Hooray!” he shouted enthusiastically. “Won’t we just have a——”
“Oh—look here!” interposed Don hastily.
Those words started a discussion. It was a lively, earnest one, in which Dave, Sam and Don spoke in the negative, while the others upholding Cranny’s side of the case and incidentally their own, met logic with logic, facts with facts, and so successfully, too, that Sam at last threw up his hands as a token of surrender.
“Of course, I knew from the start it wasn’t any use to argue,” he laughed, “but say, Bob, won’t you promise to come back in a day or two?”
“Sure thing,” said Bob.
A smaller sized argument thereupon ensued. Bob and Tom readily agreed, the former even naming the day, but Cranny hedged.
“Honest to goodness, fellows,” he protested, “it’s most certain I’ll come back, too, but——”
“Boys!” remarked Dave, solemnly, “we might as well get at some more useful occupation.”
And this is how it happened that on the following morning the detachment quarters of the Texas Rangers lost, for the time being, six of its party of interesting visitors.