Part 16 (1/2)
”Look!” Joe shouted.
The rider suddenly sprang upright, his feet gripping the saddle. With the ease of a circus rider, the cowboy stood straight, while the horse continued to gallop. With the crowd paying a roaring tribute to his feat, the rider aimed a white-feathered arrow and let it fly. With a thud it cut through the middle of the paper heart!
”Did you see the white feathers?” Joe gasped.
158 ”Let's talk to this guy,” Frank said excitedly, pus.h.i.+ng his way through the cheering throng.
Suddenly Frank froze in his tracks. The cowboy had continued at a gallop directly to the judges' stand. The rider bent over and scooped up his prize money, which a dumfounded judge held in an envelope.
Then, spurring his mount faster, the archer vaulted a low fence and disappeared over the s.h.i.+mmering prairie in a cloud of dust!
CHAPTER XVIII.
Fire in the Woods.
”well, I'll be a horned toad!” Joe exclaimed as he watched the cloud of dust vanish in the distance.
The archer had ridden off so swiftly, none of the boys had been able to get a good look at his face. Chet said he was not the man they had seen in the woods, however.
Although the trap they had laid so carefully had not been a success, it had not been without a reward. It had produced another white-feathered arrow! Frank, eager to examine it, cried: ”Let's get over to that target p.r.o.nto, before it's taken away!”
The three boys elbowed their way through the surging rodeo crowd to the spot where the straw-stuffed dummy lay grotesquely on the ground. The arrows were still sticking from it like porcupine quills.
159.
160 Frank bent down and pulled the winning shaft from the heart of the effigy. After examining it carefully, he turned to Joe.
”It's identical to the other white-feathered arrows.”
”Which means,” Chet put in, ”that the archer who just left this is the same man who shot at you in the woods.”
”Maybe yes, maybe no,” Frank observed. ”But I'm going to find out. This time n.o.body's going to stop me!”
”How can you do it?” Chet asked.
”We'll go back to the woods,” Frank replied, ”but this time we'll make it an overnight expedition so we can stay and watch as long as we want to. I think the stone with the crooked arrow on it may even be a meeting place of some kind.”
”We'll take Pye and Terry along,” Joe said. ”That is, if Hank will let us.”
”I'll ask him as soon as we get back,” Frank said. ”Anyway, I want to find out from him if he smokes Ramiro cigarettes. I forgot to ask him.”
Frank already had examined the pack and found there were no gas-filled tubes in the cigarettes. So a momentary notion he had that the crooks might have changed the name from Arrow to Ramiro had proved false.
Upon reaching home, the boys rubbed down their 161 horses, then Frank approached Hank. He was standing alongside the corral smoking a cigarette. Frank explained their proposed venture and asked if Pye and Terry might go along.
”No!” the foreman fairly barked. ”Yo5 can't take my ranch hands every time yo' a mind to do some sightseein'!”
Frank realized it was useless to argue with the obstinate foreman. The boy turned the subject of conversation to cigarettes, asking what Hank smoked.
”Ramiros,” he replied, and stalked off.
”Yo' sh.o.r.e look like a lost dogie,” a voice said suddenly. ”What's on yore mind?”
Looking up, Frank saw Terry near him. On a hunch the boy asked the singing cowboy what he really thought of Hank.
”Mighty ornery,” Terry replied. ”But he's loyal to Mis' Hardy, if that's what yo're drivin' at.”
”Thanks,” Frank said. ”See you later.”
The boy went straight to Ruth Hardy and brought her up to date on the progress in solving the Crowhead mystery. She backed up Terry a hundred per cent in his conclusion about Hank's honesty. In view of her faith in her foreman's honesty, Frank said nothing of the telephone conversation Chet had overheard in the bunkhouse.
”I'll see what I can do about convincing him to 162 let Pye and Terry go with you on your ride. I don't want you to go alone.”
After dinner she summoned Hank. The boys cleared out when the sullen foreman entered. Their i cousin took him into the living room alone, closing the door behind her.
Half an hour later the two emerged, Hank's expression unchanged. But as he strode back to the bunkhouse, Mrs. Hardy came to the boys.
”Everything's fixed up,” she said, smiling.
”You mean we get Pye and Terry?” Joe asked quickly.
”They'll ride with you tomorrow,” his cousin replied. ”Hank didn't want to let them go, because he's so shorthanded. But I told him a day's work wouldn't matter, if we can clear away this cloud that's hanging over the ranch.”
It was growing dusk when Frank and Joe went to tell Pye and Terry about the next day's plan. Both were eager for the trip, especially the Indian.
”We track bad hombre Indian way,” he said enthusiastically.
”How's that?” Joe asked.
”Use wild animal feet.” He grinned. ”He no find us.”
”How do we get the animals to do that?” Joe asked, laughing.
”You no savvy,” Pye replied. ”Pye make animal 163 feet from wood. Tie on bottom of boots. Look like animal track.”
The brothers thought Pye was fooling, but next morning, while the boys and Terry were saddling their mounts, Pye ran up to them excitedly.
”Here animal feet,” he said proudly.
In his hands he held five pairs of queer-shaped wooden contraptions, with leather thongs for tying them to the boots. ”Bear, wolf, fox, wildcat, deer,” he identified them.