“I’ll lasso that foolish surveyor and brand him,” Marshmallow threatened. “What does he mean, forcing himself on my mother like that?”
Dave sensed that Marshmallow was not enjoying the conversation, and changed the subject.
“There is going to be a grand moon,” he said. “Let us walk up to that little hill just over there, and Doris—will you sing for us?”
“I’d love to,” Doris said, simply and sincerely. “I’ve been yearning to sing just as you have been yearning to fly, Dave.”
The four chums sauntered slowly toward the round butte that rose a hundred yards or so from the house. Doris walked silently, her mind busy with the facts she had learned that day, facts which convinced her that unscrupulous, greedy men were her opponents in the contest for the property. She debated with herself the advisability of summoning aid from one or another of her uncles.
Yet, a few minutes later, it was a sweet, untroubled voice that rose through the moon-silvered air in the lovely old tune of “Sweet Alice Ben Bolt.”
CHAPTER XIV
The Clouds Gather
“I am going to drive over to the ruined cliff dwellings with Mr. Plum this morning,” Mrs. Mallow announced at the breakfast table next morning.
“Won’t you all come along?” she added. “It will be very interesting.”
Marshmallow looked distinctly annoyed.
“Dave and I heard the men at the corral talking about a bull-dogging contest ‘near here today,” he said. “We thought we might all go over and see it.”
“What is it, a sort of dog show?” Doris asked mischievously.
“No,” Dave explained. “It hasn’t anything to do with dogs. Cowboys ride up to a free steer and wrestle it to the ground by the nose and horns. It is very exciting, and dangerous.”
Kitty wrinkled her nose.
“And cruel,” she added.
“I want to ride into town,” Doris said. “I intend to poke through the—stores.”
“Well, it looks as if we separate for the day,” Marshmallow commented. “Tell Plum he can use the car, Mother. Dave and I are going to ride over with the cowboys on horseback.”
Kitty and Doris watched Plum and Mrs. Mallow drive off, and then swung into their saddles.
“Don’t you try any bull-dogging,” Doris warned Dave. “I prefer you in one piece.”
“I won’t go at all, if you like,” Dave offered. “I’d just as soon ride into town. I need a haircut.”
“Ain’t no barber in Raven Rock, pard,” laughed one of the horse-wranglers. “We just uses the hoss-clips on ourselves, here.”
Everybody laughed, and Doris and Kitty touched spurs to their ponies and trotted off toward town, Wags sitting on the horse with Doris.
“Just compare this with sitting back in a cabin plane at a hundred miles an hour,” gasped Kitty through the bitter dust, as the girls jogged along. Eventually Raven Rock was reached.
“What’s all the excitement?” Doris wondered. For Raven Rock something unusual was astir. Usually two persons seen at any one time in the street constituted normal traffic, but fully a dozen men and two or three women were headed toward the railroad station.
From afar came the wailing whistle of a locomotive. The pedestrians doubled their pace.
“Hear that?” a stranger called to the girls as they drew rein in the plaza. “That’s ol’ Number Ten, the Kansas City Limited, whistlin’ for a stop. Always uster go through here so fast we never could count the cyars!”
“This must be history in the making for Raven Rock,” Doris laughed. “Let’s see the important people who are getting off the Limited.”
The crack train thundered into the little adobe town, overshooting the station by fifty yards in its haste. Curious townsfolk surged forward toward the Pullmans.
“Look, Kitty, even our friend who backed into us is down to see the train come in,” Doris exclaimed. “There is his car.”
Just then an unusual movement beneath the last car caught Doris’s eye.
It was the dining car, and from the space created by the steps and the folding section of floor that drops over them when the door of the car is closed, a pair of legs emerged.
Unseen by anyone but the two girls, a slender male figure squirmed to the ground and ran hurriedly to the station, rubbing cinders from his eyes.
“Kitty! Look at that man! It’s the stowaway!” gasped Doris.
“As I live and breathe, it is! He got here anyhow,” her chum exclaimed. “Well, you must admire his pluck.”
“Here come the important people who stopped the Limited,” Doris said.
Trailed by the little crowd of townsfolk, whose attention was obviously divided between the great train now beginning to move and the passengers who had honored Raven Rock by disembarking, three men strode over the cinders.
“Why—why, they are with Henry Moon, the man who backed into us,” Doris gasped. “Then they must be—oh, Kitty!”
“Doris, what is the matter? You are as white as a sheet!” Kitty cried.
“That dark-faced man. He—he—oh, I’m sure he is one of the men who robbed Uncle Wardell!”
Kitty joined Doris in staring at the three men. “Have them arrested!” she said. “Quick!”
“How can I?” Doris wailed. “I can’t prove that they are crooks! Oh, look at them! If only Uncle Wardell were here!”
The two recent passengers on the Limited jumped into Moon’s car, while that worthy took his place behind the wheel and stepped on the starter. The mechanism whirred, but the car did not move.
Doris and Kitty saw Moon’s lips curl. He reached into a pocket of the car and took out a crank, then climbed from the automobile.
The stowaway slouched forward.
He spoke to Moon, as if suggesting a bargain. Moon gave the youth the crank and resumed his place at the wheel.
The stowaway began cranking the car with a vigor surprising in one so slightly built. Soon the engine coughed, backfired, and roared into life.
Moon let in the clutch and as the car shot forward. The youth leaped to the running board and climbed into the back seat.
“They’re going out beyond the town,” Kitty cried, but Doris had already seen Moon’s hands twist the wheel. She dug the spurs into her horse’s flanks, and the startled animal bolted down the road.
Kitty, amazed and wondering, whipped after her.
In less than a minute Doris heard Moon’s horn wailing behind her. Without’ slacking the rangy gallop of her mount, she reined to the right side of the road.
As the car shot past, Doris had a good look at the four occupants, all of whom were staring at her with unconcealed admiration.
“That stowaway is some relative of Miss Bedelle, I’m sure,” Doris thought, as the car passed. “He is the black-sheep brother, and that man beside him is the scar-nosed scoundrel who was talking over the telephone near Plainfield when I was calling the airport. Get along!”
Doris plied whip and spur, and the cow-pony’s unshod hoofs drummed on the clay. The game little horse was no