CHAPTER XXIV

QUESTIONS

“What’s up?” asked Jerry, solicitously. “Someone ill?”

“No,” answered Ned. “But dad intimates that we’ve fallen down on the job, so to speak, and he thinks we might as well give it up and let him send on a real detective. He says he knows of one that used to be in the United States Secret Service and he thinks this fellow would succeed where we’ve failed.”

“I don’t admit we’ve failed yet!” Jerry exclaimed. “Of course, I don’t want to presume to dictate to your father,” he hastened to add, “but I wish he’d give us a little more time.”

“My father says the same thing that Ned’s father does,” said Bob, who had finished reading his letter. “I guess yours and mine must have had a confab, and decided on this move,” he remarked to Ned.

“It looks that way. But I’m not going home, fellows. I’m going to stick it out!” and Ned struck a defiant attitude.

“So’m I!” exclaimed Bob.

“Rebels!” remarked Jerry with a smile, though none of the lads felt in any gay mood since the disappearance of Professor Snodgrass.

“Well, you have to rebel once in a while,” went on Ned. “I don’t mean to say that I’d deliberately disobey my dad,” he added. “But he doesn’t understand. I suppose he’s a bit sore at losing so many cattle, and I don’t know that I blame him. But he doesn’t understand the situation here, and your father doesn’t either, Bob.”

“I’m with you there. But this letter says come home without delay, and let the detective take up the case. Dad says there are certain reasons for this.”

“What are they?” asked Jerry.

“Mine mentions ’em, too,” added Ned. “It seems that my father is rather sorry he bought a ranch, and got Mr. Baker to go in on the deal. Dad wants the money he put in it to finance some other matters connected with his store, though he doesn’t go into details.

“He says they had a chance to sell the ranch at a handsome profit, but the intending purchaser backed out when he heard rustlers were running off the cattle. The man said he wanted a ranch with some _steers_ on it, not just _grass_,” went on Ned with a rueful smile as he referred to his father’s letter.

“Is the deal off?” asked Jerry. “It’s too bad to have your father lose money, Ned.”

“Yes. Though dad isn’t poor, still he is a good business man, and it must get on his nerves to see a waste in finances. The man who was going to buy the place hasn’t exactly given up all interest in it, but he won’t purchase until the rustlers are captured.”

“Then it’s up to us to get ’em!” cried Jerry. “We must do more and talk less.”

“I’m with you there,” agreed Ned. “But what can we do?”

“Especially when we’re practically ordered home,” put in Bob. “Told to give up and let a real detective take a hand! What can we do?” and he looked at his two chums.

Ned seemed to have a sudden inspiration.

“I know one thing I’m going to do!” he exclaimed.

“What?” cried his two chums together.

“I’m going to telegraph to dad.”

“And say what?” Jerry queried.

“I’m going to wire him that Professor Snodgrass has most unexpectedly disappeared, and that we can’t leave him here in this predicament, especially as he came out West with us as our guest. That will get my mother, anyhow,” he added with a twinkle in his eyes. “Mother’s great on that hospitable stuff, and she’ll get dad to let us stay all right. She’ll argue that it would be wrong for us to come away and leave the professor in the hands of the rustlers--if that’s where he really is.”

“I think you’re right,” returned Jerry, after a moment of thought. “It’s only fair to him, and it will gain us a little delay in which we must work harder than ever before to solve the mystery.”

“Now you’re talking!” cried Bob.

This telegram was prepared and sent to Mr. Slade:

“Professor Snodgrass has disappeared. Probably captured by rustlers. Are on their trail. Impossible to leave now. Better wire us money for expenses. Letter follows.”

“Think that will do?” asked Ned.

“Pretty well gotten up,” Jerry assented. “You put it a bit strong, though, about being on their trail.”

“Well, it’s true enough. We are after them--on their trail--so to speak. I didn’t say we had _caught_ them. But we will!”

“I hope so!” agreed Jerry.

The boys anxiously awaited the reply to their message, and to their gratification, it came the next day. They were told they might remain, and in a letter that followed a few days later funds were sent to all three, while there were many expressions of concern from those in Cresville concerning the fate of Professor Snodgrass.

“Spare no expense in finding him,” wrote Mr. Slade. “Hire a couple of detectives if necessary.”

“I guess we can do as well at this business as the city detectives,” growled Ned.

His chums agreed with him.

“And we haven’t got to the bottom of the mystery of Munson’s fake leg,” remarked Jerry as, on the afternoon following the receipt of the letters, they were riding together toward a distant part of the ranch.

“No, that’s another secret we have to solve,” agreed Ned. “He said something about riding to town to-day to have the doctor look at it. He’s limping worse than ever.”

“He’ll never do it,” observed Bob.

“Do what?” asked Jerry.

“Let a doctor examine his leg. That would give the fake away right off the bat. That’s why he didn’t want to let the doctor look the time you were hurt, Jerry.”

“Oh, of course! But, it sure is a queer game.”

The capture of Professor Snodgrass--if capture it was--seemed to put a quietus on the cattle raids. The stock at Square Z ranch had not been molested since his capture, and the foreman and his cowboys were beginning to feel that perhaps the operating gang had been frightened off because of the vigorous search made for them.

Meanwhile, Professor Snodgrass had not been forgotten. A systematic search was kept up for him, but without result. Circulars describing him had been sent through the mail to various ranches and to the neighboring cities. Cowboys from other ranges made trips to the mountain where he had last been seen and tried to find the little scientist. But he seemed to have disappeared completely. Ned, Bob and Jerry joined in these hunts, eagerly searching for some clue to the mystery.

Reports from distant ranches told that there had not been any cattle losses on them of late, though no other ranch had ever been so systematically robbed as had Square Z.

And then, like a thunderclap on a pleasant day, came a change. Two cowboys, who had been sent to bring in a bunch of choice steers for shipment to Omaha, returned without them but with worried faces.

“Well?” asked the foreman. “Where are they?”

“Gone.”

“Rustlers?”

“Yep.”

“Huh!”

It was short talk but to the point.

“How did it happen?” Mr. Watson demanded, and when the cowboy admitted that the raid took place while he and his companion slept, the foreman became angry for one of the few times the boys had seen him in that condition.

“Get off the ranch! You’re discharged!” he called to the cowboys. “A tenderfoot could have done better!”

There was more than the usual buzz of excitement about the ranch when the news of the cattle raid became known. It proved, at least to Ned, Bob and Jerry, that the rustlers were still in the neighborhood and if they were, and had captured the professor, there was a chance to rescue him.

“Your father will feel still more greatly disappointed in us when he hears there’s been another raid,” said Jerry to Ned.

“I don’t intend he shall hear of it right away,” was the answer; and when Jerry pressed for an explanation his chum said he was going to ask the foreman not to telegraph word of the theft to Mr. Slade for a few days.

“I want to have an opportunity to see what we can do,” went on Ned. “It may be our last chance. A few days’ delay in letting dad know won’t do him any harm, and it will allow us to keep on trying to solve the mystery. If we can’t, in a reasonable time, I’m willing to quit, and let the New York detective try his hand.”

“Well, maybe it will be wise,” agreed Jerry. “But we’ll put in our best licks on this last chance. It does seem as though we ought to get some sort of clue to the thieves after all these tries.”

As the cowboys who had reported the raid did not know what time it took place, except at some hour during the night, it could not be said how much of a start the thieves had. It was seven hours at least, for the men had reached the ranch house about noon, and they had awakened at daylight to find the cattle gone. More likely it was ten hours, and that was a good start.

The trail of the stolen cattle was comparatively easy to follow. And, as had the others, eventually it led to the foot hills and to the ravine the boys had explored so ineffectually.

“The secret is here, and here’s where we’ve got to stick until we find it!” declared Jerry. “We’ll make a secret camp here, and not leave day or night. Can’t you plant a bunch of cattle somewhere, so they could be easily stolen?” he asked Mr. Watson.

“I s’pose I could. But why?”

“Well, we could stay near ’em and see who takes ’em. Then we could follow.”

“Oh, a sort of trap, eh?”

“That’s it.”

“Well, I’ll think about it.”

Search as they did, the rest of that day, no trace of the missing cattle could be found. They returned to the ranch, tired and despondent. Mr. Watson had agreed to wait a few days before informing Mr. Slade of this latest loss.

“I’ll give you your last chance, boys,” he said. “Make the most of it.”

That night, when the three chums were out among the cowboys, listening to their talk, Munson came in. Hinkee Dee seemed to notice him at once.

“Where you been all day?” asked the assistant foreman.

“In town, having my leg treated.”

“Do any treating on your own account?”

“Why, no, I can’t say I did.”

“Oh, you weren’t around Jack’s place then?”

Munson looked up quickly at this persistent questioning.

“I don’t see that it is any of your business if I was,” he said slowly.

A flush mounted to the tanned face of Hinkee Dee.