“Tell me about that, now,” muttered Jimmy; “was there ever anything like the luck that chases after us all the while? Here we start out to visit Harry’s uncle, so he might carry out a mission that his folks sent him on, and of course the Government must a guessed all about it, since they went and laid a game to be hatched out right in the same part of the Wild and Wooly West. Can you beat it?”

“Let Ned tell us what the game is, can’t you, Jimmy?” demanded Harry.

“Yes, and please don’t break in again with your remarks until he’s all through,” added Jack. “It bothers a fellow to make connections when you get started. If you must talk, why, we’ll throw in and hire a hall for the occasion. Now, Ned, tell us what the Secret Service folks want you to do.”

“I’ve had a message in cipher from my people in Washington, telling me that while I’m out in this section they’d like me to look up one Clem Parsons, who’s been wanted for a long time on the charge of counterfeiting Government notes. When last heard from he was running a stage line somewhere in the country of the Colorado and doing a little in the way of fleecing unsuspecting travelers who come out here to see the wonders of the Canyon. So from now on we’ll begin to ask questions and see whether we can get on the trail of this gentleman who’s given some of the smartest agents in the Secret Service the call-down.”

“And then they have to depend on Ned Nestor and his able assistant, Jimmy McGraw,” remarked the last mentioned scout; “excuse me, fellers, but if you don’t blow your own horn, who d’ye reckon’ll be fool enough to do it for you? But Ned, if our luck holds as good as it generally does, chances are ten to one this same Clem Parsons will come tumbling right up against us. It seems like you might be a magnet and they all have to come our way sooner or later.”

“Any description of what he looks like?” asked Jack, who had known Ned to get similar orders on previous occasions and could guess that it was not all left to his imagination.

“Yes, they tell me he is tall and thin and has a scar on his left cheek. He used to be a cow puncher at one time and might be working at his old trade now. That’s a point to remember when we get to the Double Cross Ranch. Every puncher will have to run the gantlet of our eyes and if one of them happens to be marked with a scar on his left cheek, it’ll be a bad day for him.”

“Now, wouldn’t it be queer if we did run across the mutt there at your uncle’s place, Harry?” remarked Jimmy. “But here we are again, Ned, uniting business with pleasure like we’ve done heaps of times before now. Mr. Clem Parsons, I’m sure sorry for you when this combination gets started to work, because you’ve got to come in out of the wet and that’s all there is to it!”

It might appear that Jimmy was much given to boasting; but as a rule he made good, so that this failing might be forgiven by those who knew him and his propensity for joking.

They moved out of town after getting a pretty poor apology for a lunch at the tavern. Jimmy declared that he would starve on such fare and announced his intention of immediately opening a box of crackers he had purchased at a local store so as to keep himself from suffering.

Ned, as was his habit, had interviewed about everybody that crossed his path, so as to improve upon the rude map he carried and which he had found to be faulty on several occasions, which fact caused him to distrust it as a guide.

“We ought to make the ranch by tomorrow evening, if all goes well,” he told his three chums, as they walked onward over the plain, still heading almost due southwest.

“Not much danger of anything upsetting our calculations from now on,” observed Jack, “unless we meet up with drunken punchers, run across some bad men who have been chased by the sheriff’s posse out of the railroad towns and who try to make a living by holding up travelers once in six months; or else get caught in a fine old prairie fire.”

“Say, that last could happen, that’s right,” Jack went on to exclaim, looking a little uneasily at the dead grass that in places completely concealed the greener growth underneath. “If a big gale was blowing and a spark should get into this stuff she would go awhooping along as fast as a train could run. That’s something I’ve often read about and thought I’d like to see, but come to think of it, now that I’m on the ground, I don’t believe I care much about it after all.”

“They say it’s a grand sight,” Harry volunteered; “but according to my mind a whole lot depends on which side of the fire you happen to be. What’s interesting to some might even mean death to others.”

“Yes, I’ve read lots about the same,” admitted Jack, “and of the trouble people have had in saving themselves when chased by one of these fires on the plains. If we do see one of the same here’s hoping we are to windward of the big blaze.”

When the sun sank that evening they were hurrying to reach what seemed to be a stream of some sort, judging from the line of trees that cut across the plain and which only grow where there is more or less water to be had.

The three burros must have scented the presence of water, for there was no keeping the animals within bounds. They increased their pace until they were almost on the run; and Jimmy threw away the fag end of a whip with which he had been amusing himself by tickling the haunches of the burro in his charge and urging him to move along faster.

One of the animals started to bray in a fashion that could have been easily heard half a mile or more away.

Hardly had the discordant sounds died away than the boys were considerably surprised to hear a shrill voice coming from directly ahead, as though the exultant bray of the pack animal had given warning of their presence to some one who needed assistance the worst kind.

“Help! Come quick and get me! Help – help!” came the words as clear as a bell and causing Harry and Jimmy to stare at each other as though their first thought might have been along the line of some deception that was being practiced upon them.

But there was Ned already on the jump and shouting over his shoulder as he ran:

“Jimmy, give your burro over to Harry to look after; you too, Jack and follow me on the run!”

“That suits me all right!” cried Jack; “here Harry, please look after my pack!” and with these words he was off at full speed.

Jimmy was close at his heels. He had only waited long enough to snatch his rifle from the top of the pack on the burro that had been given into his charge after his own had been lost in the mountain disaster. Jimmy was always thinking they might be attacked by Indians off their reservation or else run across some bad men who liked to play their guns on strangers just to see them dance. For that reason he seldom if ever allowed himself to be caught far away from his repeating Marlin these days.

When they had pushed into the patch of cottonwoods they found that Ned was already at work trying to lend the assistance that had been so lustily called for in that childish treble.

A figure was in the stream, although just his head and a small portion of his body could be seen. He was stretching out his hands towards Ned in a beseeching manner that at first puzzled Jimmy.

“Why, I declare if it ain’t a little boy!” he exclaimed; “but what’s he doin’ out there, I want to know? Why don’t he come ashore if the water’s too deep. What ails the cub, d’ye think, Jack?”

“Don’t know – might be quicksand!” snapped the other, as he once more started to hurry forward.

Ned was talking with the stranger now, evidently assuring him that there was no further need of anxiety since they had reached the spot.

“Can’t you budge at all?” they heard him ask.

“Not a foot,” came the reply; “seems like I mout be jest glued down here for keeps and that’s a fact, stranger.”

“How long have you been caught there?” asked the scout master.

“Reckon as it mout be half hour er thereabouts,” the boy who was held fast in the iron grip of the treacherous quicksand told him; and so far as Jack could see he did not exhibit any startling signs of fright, for he was a boy of the plains and evidently used to running into trouble as well as perilous traps.

“But,” Jack broke in with, “you never shouted all that time, or we’d have heard you long before we did?”

“Never let out a yip till I ketched that burro speakin’,” the boy replied; “what was the use when I didn’t think there was a single person inside o’ five mile? I jest tried and tried to git out but she hung on all the tighter; and the water kept acreepin’ up till it’d been over my mouth in ten minutes more I reckon.”

“Well, we are going to get you out of that in a hurry, now,” Ned told him in a reassuring tone; “Jack, climb up after me, to help pull. Jimmy, you stand by to do anything else that’s wanted.”

Ned, being a born woodsman, had immediately noted the fact that the limb of a tree exactly overhung the spot where the boy had been trapped in the shifting sand. This made his task the easier; but had it been otherwise he would have found some means for accomplishing his ends, even though he had to make a mattress of bushes and branches on which to safely approach the one in deadly peril.

Creeping out on that stout limb Ned dropped the noose of his rope down to the boy, who was only some six feet below him.

“Put it around under your arms,” Ned told him; but as though he understood the method of procedure already, the boy in the sand was even in the act of doing this when Ned spoke.

“Tie the end around the limb and let me pull myself up, Mister, won’t you?” the boy pleaded, as though ashamed of having been caught in a trap, and wishing to do something looking to his own release.

This suited Ned just as well, though he meant to have a hand in the pulling process himself and also give Jack a chance. So when he fastened the rope to the limb of the tree he did so at a point midway between himself and Jack.

“Get hold and pull!” he said in a low tone to his chum; for already was the boy below straining himself with might and main to effect his own release.

It would have proved a much harder task than he contemplated; but the scouts did not mean that he should exhaust himself any further in trying. They managed to get some sort of grip on the rope and then Ned called out cheerily:

“Yo heave-o! here he comes! Yo-heave-o! up with him, Jack! Now, once more, all together for a grand pull – yo-heave-o! Hurrah, he’s nearly out of the sand!”

Five seconds later and the energetic boy was scrambling across the limb of the tree; and in as many minutes all of them had descended to the ground, the end accomplished and nobody much the worse for the experience.

“It was a close call for me, that’s sure,” the boy was saying, as he gravely went around and shook hands with each one of the scouts, not excepting Harry, who had meanwhile come up, leading the three burros; “an’ I want you all to know I’m glad that donkey let out his whoop when he did. Why, I might a been all under when you got here; but say, I lost my gun and that makes me mad.”

Looking at the boy more closely they were struck with the fact that while he did not seem to be more than nine years old, he was dressed like a cow-puncher and had a resolute air. How much of this was assumed in order to impress them with the idea that he had not been alarmed in the least by his recent peril, of course no one could say. Ned was wondering how the boy, brought up undoubtedly amidst such perils and on the lookout for danger all the while, could have fallen into such a silly little trap as this.

“What were you doing in the stream that you stood there and let the sand suck you in?” he asked as he proceeded to help the boy scrape himself off so as to appear more presentable.

“I was a little fool, all right,” the kid immediately answered, with an expression of absolute disgust on his sharp face; “you see, I glimpsed a bunch of deer feeding just over yonder to windward and as they were headin’ in this way I thought I’d lie low under the river bank and wait till they got inside easy gunshot. I tied my pony over in the thickest place of the timber and then walked out to where the water jest come to my knees, where I got low down to wait. Say, I was that taken up with watchin’ them deer afeedin’ up that I forgets all about everything else and was some s’prised to feel the water tricklin’ around my waist like. After that I knowed the huntin’ game was all up, and that less I wanted to be smothered I’d have to get out in a hurry. But it didn’t matter much how I pulled, an’ heaved and tried to swim I jest stuck like I was bolted down to a snubbin’ post and somebody had cinched the girth on me. Then, after a while, when I was expectin’ to swaller water, I heard that burro singin’ and afore I could help it I jest hollored out. Guess you must a thought it was a maverick. I could a kicked myself right away afterwards ’cause I give tongue so wild like!”

Ned smiled. He realized that the cub had imbibed the spirit of the Indian warrior who disdains to display any weakness of the flesh. No matter how much he may have been frightened by his recent terrible predicament, he did not choose any one to know about it. Indians may feel fear but they have learned never to show it by look or action and to go to their deaths, if need be, taunting the foe.

“Well,” he told the small boy, “we intended to camp for the night here close to the river and we’d be glad to have you stay over with us. Plenty of grub for everybody and it might be much more pleasant than being by yourself. We are not Western boys but then we’ve been around more or less and know something about how things are done out here. Will you join us – er – ”

“My name is Amos, Amos Adams, and I’ll be right well pleased to stay over with you to-night, sure I will,” the boy went on to say.

So it was settled, and out of just such small things as their meeting Amos in such a strange way great events sometimes spring. But none of the scouts so much as suspected this when they busied themselves preparing the camp, building the cooking fire, and seeing that all the animals were staked out to feed, after watering them.

CHAPTER IV.
PICKING UP POINTS

“Ned, whatever do you imagine this kid is doing out here all by himself?”

Jack asked this question in a low tone. They had cooked supper, and disposed of it promptly; and there had been an abundance for the guest, as well as the four chums. And now the two scouts were lounging near the fire, while Jimmy and Amos cleaned up the tin dishes and cooking utensils; Harry meanwhile being busily engaged with some notes he wanted to jot down for future use, in comparing his recent experiences with those of others who had suffered tortures in the notorious Death Valley.

“Well, you’ve heard as much of his talk as any of us, Jack,” replied the leader of the expedition, quietly, “and so far there’s been nothing said about himself. I’m going to beckon to Amos to come over here, and put a few leading questions to him. Out here when a fellow is entertained at the camp fire, it’s only fair that he give some sort of an account of himself. Besides, Amos looks so much like a kid, just as you say, that it makes the thing seem queer.”

A minute later, catching the eye of the boy, he crooked his finger and nodded his head. Plainly Amos understood, for he immediately came across.

“Sit down, Amos,” Ned told him.

The small boy in the cowboy suit did so, at the same time allowing a sort of smile to come upon his bronzed face.

“Want to know somethin’ about me, I reckon?” he remarked, keenly.

Jack chuckled as though amused at his shrewdness; but Ned only said:

“Well, ordinarily out here on the plains I understand that men seldom express any curiosity about their chance guests; it isn’t always a safe thing to do. But you see, Amos, in your case it’s different.”

“Sure it is; I get on to that, Mr. Scout Master,” replied the boy, readily; for he had ere this noticed the emblem which Ned bore upon his khaki coat, and which stamped him as authorized to answer to this name, which would indicate that Amos knew something about the Boy Scout business.

“In the first place we chanced to be of some little assistance to you.”

“A heap!” broke in the other, quickly.

“And then, excuse me for saying it, but you are such a kid that anybody would be surprised to run across you out by yourself, carrying a gun, riding a pony like the smartest puncher going, and after big game at the time you got stuck in that quicksand – all of which, Amos, must be our excuse for feeling that we’d like to hear something about you.”

“That’s only fair and square, Ned,” the boy spoke up immediately; “Jimmy there has been telling me the greatest lot of stuff about what you fellows have been doing all over, that I’d think he was stuffing me, only he held up his hand right in the start, and declared he never told anything but the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help him. And I’m ready to tell you who I am, and what I’m adoin’ out here.”

“Not that we think you’re anything that you shouldn’t be, Amos,” put in Jack.

“Well, my name’s Amos Adams, just like I said, and all my life I’ve been around a cattle ranch. That’s why I know so much about roping steers, and riding buckin’ broncs. I guess I was in a saddle before my ma weaned me. There are a few things mebbe I can’t quite do as well as some of these here prize punchers, but it’s only because I ain’t as strong as them, that’s all.”

Looking at his confident face the scouts believed that Amos was only speaking the plain truth.

“My dad’s name is Hy Adams,” continued the kid puncher. “I guess you ain’t been around these diggin’s much yet, or you’d a heard who he is. They call him the Bad Man of the Bittersweets, and when he raises his fog-horn of a voice lots of men that think themselves brave just give a hitch to their shoulders this way,” and he imitated it to the life as he spoke, “and does what he tells ’em. That’s when he’s been drinkin’. But then there are other times – oh, well, I reckon, I hadn’t ought to tell family secrets.

“We live in a cabin, ’bout ten miles away from here. My dad, he’s in the cattle business, when he don’t loaf. Sometimes he’s ’round home, and agin he ain’t, just ’cordin’ to how things are agoin’. Mam, she’s a little woman, but she knows how to run the house. I gotter sister, too, younger’n me, and her name it’s Polly. I ain’t gone to school any to speak of, but mam, she kinder teaches me, when I ain’t ridin’ out on the range, or totin’ my gun on a hunt. That makes me mad to think I lost my gun in the drink there.”

“No use hunting for it in the morning, I should think?” suggested Jack.

“Nary bit,” the boy replied quickly; “it’s down under that shiftin’ sand long before now. But then she was an old gun, and I’m savin’ up to git a new six-shot rifle, so it don’t need to be long now before I’ll be heeled agin.”

“Is your father a rancher, then, Amos?” Jack went on to ask, idly.

The boy grinned and looked at him queerly.

“Well,” he replied, with a quaint drawl that amused the scouts, “I don’t know as you could call him that way, exactly. He’s been cow puncher, and nigh everything else a man c’n be down thisaway to make a livin’. Me and my awful dad we don’t git on well. That’s one reason I gen’rally skips out when he takes a notion to lay ’round home for a spell. He knows right well I ain’t afeard of him, if he has got the name of bein’ a holy terror. I happen to belong to the same fambly. ’Sides, he ain’t what you’d call my real and true dad.”

“Oh! I see, you adopted him, did you, Amos?” Jack asked, laughingly.

“My mam she married agin after pop he was planted, and they went an’ changed my name from Scroggins to Adams. I don’t know which I likes best; but Scroggins that’s honest, anyway, which Adams ain’t – leastways some people around this region say it ain’t. When I grows up I reckon I’ll be a Scroggins, or else get a new name.”

Again the scouts exchanged amused glances. Amos was certainly a most entertaining little chap, with his quaint sayings.

“Now, you see, dad never comes home alone any more, but fetches some of his cronies along with him, and there’s unpleasant scenes ahappenin’ all the time; which is one of the reasons why I skip out. They gets to drinkin’, too, purty hard, till mam she has to douse a bucket of water over each puncher, and start ’em off. Mam she don’t approve of the kinds of business that dad takes up. But he keeps amakin’ these here visits to home further apart all the while, ’cause things ain’t as pleasant as they might be. Some time mebbe he won’t come no more. I’m bankin’ on that, which is one reason I ain’t never laid a hand on him when he gets roarin’ like a mad bull. There are others, too, but I wont mention the same.”

Amos had apparently been very frank with his new friends. He seemed to have taken a great fancy for them all, and, in turn, asked many questions concerning their expected visit to Harry’s uncle on Double Cross Ranch, which place he knew very well.

The conversation by degrees became general, and finally the scouts went on to talk about their own affairs. During this exchange of opinions, it happened that the name of Clem Parsons was mentioned by Ned. Perhaps it would be hardly fair to call it “chance,” when in reality the scout master wanted to find out whether the kid puncher seemed to be familiar with the name of the man whom the Government authorities in Washington wished him to round up.

The bait took, for immediately he heard Amos say:

“What’s that, Clem Parsons? Say, I happen to know a man by that name, and he’s been over to our house lots of times, too.”

“Then he’s a puncher, is he?” asked Ned.

“Well, I reckon he has been ’bout everything in his day, for I’ve heard him say so,” came the reply. “He rides with my awful dad, an’ they seem to git on together, which is some queer, because most of ’em is that skeered o’ dad they tries to steer clear o’ him.”

“My! but this dad of yours must be a grizzly bear, Amos?” remarked Jimmy, who had been greatly impressed with what he heard the boy say.

“Just you wait till you see him, that’s all,” was what Amos told him. “Mam, she reckons as how ’twas this same Clem Parsons as had got dad to ridin’ ’round the kentry doin’ things that might git him into trouble, an’ she hates him like pizen, for the same. Since they got to goin’ together, dad he’s allers showing plenty of the long-green, which he never handled before. But I ain’t tellin’ fambly secrets, and I reckons I’d better shut up shop.”

He had said enough, however, to convince Ned and Jack that he strongly suspected his step-father of having joined forces with a band of cattle thieves who were stealing the fattest beeves neighboring ranchers owned, and selling them on the side.

There is always this temptation existing when cattle are raised on the range, often feeding for days and weeks many miles away from the ranch house, and scattered among the little valleys where the grass grows greenest. In the darkness of the night, a few of these experienced rustlers can cut out what they want of a herd, and drive them far away, effectually concealing the trail. Then the brands are changed adroitly, and the cattle shipped away to be sold in a distant market.

So long as this lawless business can be carried on successfully, it brings in big money to the reckless rustlers; but if discovered in the act they are usually treated with scant ceremony by the angry punchers and shot down like wolves.

To some men the fascination of the life causes them to ignore its perils. Then besides, the fact that money pours in upon them with so little effort, is a temptation they are unable to resist. So long as there are ranches, and cattle to be raised for the market, there will be men who go wrong and try to get a fat living off those who do the work.

It did not surprise Ned to learn that this clever rascal, whom he had been asked to look up and apprehend if possible, had for the time being forsaken the counterfeiting game and started on a new lay. Clem Parsons was no one idea man. His past fairly bristled with shrewd devices, whereby he deluded the simple public and eluded the detectives sent out by the Secret Service to enmesh him.

He had played the part of moonshiner, smuggler, and bogus moneymaker for years, and snapped his fingers at the best men on the pay roll of the Government. Now, if as seemed possible, he had turned cattle rustler, perhaps there might come a complete change in the programme; for if the irate ranchmen and their faithful punchers only got on a hot trail with Clem at the other end, the authorities at Washington might be saved much further anxiety; for a man who has been strung up to a telegraph pole and riddled with bullets is not apt to give any one trouble again.

Ned had learned some important facts that were apt to prove more or less valuable to him presently. Already he felt that they had been paid many times over for the little effort it had taken to rescue Amos from the sand of the shallow river.

Scouts are taught to do a good deed without any thought of a return; but all the same, it is pleasant to know that the reward does often come, and if any of the four chums had failed to find a chance to turn his badge right-side up that day, on account of having given a helping hand to some one, certainly they must feel entitled to that privilege after lifting Amos out of his sad predicament. Saving a precious human life must surely be counted as answering the requirements of the scout law.

When Amos, a little later, left them to saunter down to the brink of the river, in order to give his mottled pony a last drink before leaving him at the end of his rope to crop grass the remainder of the night, Jack turned to the scout master and gave expression to his convictions as follows:

“Well, it looks like your old luck holds good, Ned, and that you stand a chance of running across your game the very first thing after getting here. If this Clem Parsons Amos tells us about turns out to be the same man the Government wants you to tackle, he’ll be walking into the net any old time from now on. Why, we may run across him tomorrow or the day afterwards, who knows?”

“He’s the right party,” said Ned, quietly. “I asked Amos if he had a scar on his cheek, and he said it gave Clem a look as though he was grinning all the time, a sort of sneering expression, I imagine. And as you say, Jack, I’m in great luck to strike a hot trail so early in the hunt. Given the chance, and I’ll have Mr. Clem Parsons on the way to Los Angeles, by rail, with a hop, skip and a jump.”

“He’s a nifty character, all right,” remarked Jimmy; “and trains with a hard crowd out here, so we’ll all have to pitch in and help lift him. Four of us, armed with rifles as we are, ought to be enough to flag him.”

“One thing in our favor,” ventured Jack, “is that he’ll never for a minute dream of being afraid of a pack of Boy Scouts. While he might keep a suspicious eye on every strange man he meets, and his hand ready to draw a gun, he’ll hardly give us a second look. That’s where we can get the bulge on Clem, and his ignorance is going to be his undoing yet.”

“Perhaps we’d better be a little careful how we mention these things while Amos is around,” Ned went on to say.

“But sure, you don’t think that little runt would peach on us, do you?” demanded Jimmy, who had apparently taken a great liking for the diminutive puncher.

“Certainly not,” answered Ned, “but you understand one of the things that goes to make a successful Secret Service operator is in knowing how to keep his own counsel. He’s got to learn all he can about others, and tell as little about himself as will carry him through. So please keep quiet about my wanting to invite this Clem Parsons to an interview with the Collector in Los Angeles.”

Jimmy promptly raised his hand.

“I’m on,” he said. “Mum’s the word till you lift the embargo, Ned. But it begins to look like we might have some interestin’ happenings ahead of us, from what we know about this Clem Parsons, and what we guess is agoin’ on between the ranchers and the cattle rustlers. I thought all the froth had blown off the top, after we quit that Death Valley, but now I’m beginnin’ to believe we’re agoin’ to scratch gravel again right smart. Which suits Jimmy McGraw all right, because he’s built that way, and never did like to see the green mould set on top of the pond. Keep things astirrin’, that’s my way. When folks go to sleep, give the same a punch, and start something doin’.”

“Well,” said Harry, looking up from his work close by, “if you have a few more narrow squeaks like that one to-day up on the mountain trail, it won’t be long before they plant you under the daisies,” but Jimmy only laughed at the warning.