“What are we turning aside for, Ned?” and as Jimmy asked this question he laid a hand on the arm of the scout master, having pushed up from behind, leading the pack animal that had been given over to his charge after his own was lost.

“Why,” replied Ned, readily enough, “you see, Amos lives over among those trees, where there’s a little stream, and he hinted pretty broadly that, while we were passing, he’d like us to meet up with his mother.”

“Oh! that’s all right,” Jimmy asserted. “I’ve taken quite a liking for the kid and a little rest will do the bunch good, anyway. One thing I’ve made up my mind about, Ned, and I don’t care who hears me say it.”

“All right, pitch in, and let’s get the glad news, Jimmy,” remarked Jack, from a point near by.

“Never again for me to start our on a trip afoot while I’m here in this hot country!” Jimmy declared solemnly, holding up his hand, as though he were in the witness box. “What sillies we were not to have thought of that instead of putting our good cash into that bunco automobile that played out before it even got decently started.”

“It seems that we’ve all learned our little lesson,” Ned admitted, “and after this we ride, if we go at all. Cars may do very well, where there are half-way decent roads; but out on the sandy desert and on the plains give me a broncho every time.

“But say, are you fellows noticing how jolly this scenery is around here?” Harry wanted to know just then, from the rear. “Look at that sage brush on the slope of that low hill over to the right. It must be breast high to a horse, and seems like I could smell its fragrance away off here. How gray it looks, except where the wind waves it and then it seems nearly purple.”

“Yes,” added Ned, “and this must be what they call rattlesnake weed, though I don’t know what it’s got to do with the crawlers. You can see the grasshoppers jumping in that lush stuff where the ground’s moist. And there’s a king bird sitting on that high weed yonder.”

“Listen to the gophers whistling a warning to their kind, when they see us coming,” remarked Jack. “Yes, Harry, you’re right, this is worth looking at. Why, I wouldn’t be surprised now, if at night-time, you could hear the drowsy chirp of the crickets and the shrill rattle of katydids around here. A bigger contrast to what we went through in that desert you couldn’t imagine.”

“It’s sure all to the good,” asserted Jimmy, “and I don’t blame that mother of Amos for pitching her dugout in this particular region. But mebbe she’ll be sorry the boy didn’t fetch any game home with him.”

“Oh! Amos says he means to start out again in a different direction and knows where he’s pretty sure to get an antelope, anyhow,” Jack remarked.

They were now approaching the trees in which some sort of human habitation evidently had been constructed, for smoke was seen curling lazily upward.

It proved to be one of those half-dugout, half-building which is to be found in many parts of the Wild West where lumber is scarce. As there was practically no winter weather in this part of the country, it answered all purposes, though far from a thing of beauty.

Still, that mother of Amos’ had brightened things up more or less, so that it could be seen the hand of a woman was around. A small garden lay back of the house, surrounded by a wire fence to keep animals from devouring the precious green stuff which was grown there.

Several dogs started toward them with yelps and deep-throated barking; and Jimmy unconsciously reached out a hand for the Marlin that was fastened to the pack of his burro. Jimmy’s dislike for wolves was shared by dogs of all kinds. He said it must have been born in him, since he could not remember ever having had any desperate adventure with canine foes while a kid.

Amos, however, threw oil on the troubled waters and, at the sound of his voice, the fury of the dogs changed instantly to a noisy greeting. They jumped up and fawned on the kid in a way that told how much they loved him. And, doubtless, instinct told each beast that those in company of the young master must also be friends; for, when Ned whistled and snapped his fingers, one of the dogs immediately started to approach, wagging his tail in a neighborly way.

A small-sized woman had come out of the dugout and stood there with a hand shading her eyes, as though to see who might be approaching. Ned noticed that she carried a shotgun in her other hand, and it struck him that a woman who might often be left at home alone in this strange country had need of knowing how to use some sort of firearm.

She looked very meek and did not seem to have very much snap and go about her. When Amos introduced the boys and told what a great favor they had done him, she went around shaking hands in an odd way; but evidently Mrs. Adams differed from the vast majority of her sex, for she did not seem to have much to say.

“Gee! what a shame!” Jimmy muttered in Ned’s ear.

“What is?” asked the scout master, also in a whisper.

“That’s always the way it goes,” continued the observing Jimmy, “seems like there never was a shrinking little woman, as timid as they make ’em, but what she had to go and link herself with some big bully of a blustering man. Opposites seem to attract in this world; you’ve seen a speck of a girl pick out the tallest feller she could find, and the other way, too.”

“Yes, it does look like that, Jimmy,” admitted Ned, as he tried to discover some trace of spunk about the little woman, and utterly failed.

“Chances are,” Jimmy continued, in his reflective way, “that when this bad man of a Hy Adams, the worst case along the whole border, they say, gets on one of his tearin’ fits, he just makes Rome howl. And say, I can just see that poor timid little thing cowering down like a scared puppy when it hears its master raging. But, then, mebbe Amos he hangs around to sort of protect his maw; though it don’t seem as if a small chap like him could do much along that line.”

“If he does, he didn’t think it right to do any boasting that I can remember,” Ned replied, again studying the mistress of the dugout, but without much success.

Mrs. Adams insisted on their resting a short while and taking a cup of coffee with her. Apparently, she had some means of her own, for there seemed to be plenty to do with in the place; and when the boys saw the bunks used for sleeping they pronounced them not at all bad. Indeed Jimmy promptly began yawning; and, if any one had invited him to test one of the bunks, the chances are he would have only too willingly complied.

There was little said during the meal, at least by the mother of Amos. Perhaps, as Jimmy suggested in an aside to Ned, the weight of her troubles in being mated to a human hurricane like Hy Adams had taken all the life out of her, and hence she evinced but little interest in whatever happened.

Amos, as if to cover up this lack of conversational gifts on the part of his mother, kept the boys busy telling some of their past adventures. And, finally, Ned advised that they had better be getting ready to pull out, as considerable territory remained to be covered before they could expect to reach the cattle ranch buildings.

“You’ll sure look us up before long, Amos?” he said to the lad, as they shook hands at parting.

“I should say yes,” added impulsive Jimmy; “because I’d hate to think I wasn’t goin’ to see you again.”

Amos looked serious.

“I did promise you, didn’t I?” he observed slowly, “and when I says a thing I nigh always keep my word; but I kinder reckon as how I mightn’t be welcome over to the Double Cross Ranch.”

“You mean, because you have the hard luck to be connected with a bad man like Hy Adams?” Harry remarked. “But don’t bother about a little thing like that. My two uncles are the kind of men who judge a fellow by what he’s done himself, and not by his relations. Why, we had a bad egg in our family once, and seems to me he was hung or something of the kind. But that’s no reason I ought to be, is it?”

“Er, I don’t know about that,” muttered Jimmy, with a sparkle in his fun-loving blue eyes.

The good-byes were said, and the scouts started again toward the southeast. Amos had given them full directions, so that there was no possibility of their going wrong. And as the day was far cooler than many they had experienced of late, all of them were feeling in fine spirits.

They watched the buzzards lazily wheeling around high up in the heavens, apparently bent on finding out where they could get their next meal.

“What a fine view they must have of the plain up there,” Harry happened to remark; “makes me think of when we went up with those aviators, who had the dirigible balloon near the border of Death Valley and were experimenting in dropping bombs down, just like will be done in the next big war between the Nations, when battleships must give way to aeroplanes and submarines.”

“Watch that hawk, will you!” cried Jack, “see how he is chasing after that bird! I declare, it looks like he’d sure get his dinner.”

“How I hate hawks!” exclaimed Jimmy, hotly, as he reached for his gun, “they’re the pirates of the air, and just duck down on poor little birds whenever they feel like having a bite. Hey! he got the innocent that rush, didn’t he? Oh! wouldn’t I just like to get a shot at the murderer, though!”

Jimmy, of course, forgot this was the daily business of the hawk and that he only slew when he was hungry and not for pleasure. He also forgot that many men who call themselves sportsmen persist in killing game or game fish long after they have reached the limit of disposing of the same for food and even throw the victims of their cruelty aside in heaps – the more shame to their claim to manhood.

“Well, perhaps you may have a chance to play the noble role of avenger,” chuckled Jack, “that is, if you can shoot straight; because you notice the hawk has now flown with his prey to that dead treetop and alighted there. Jimmy, get your gun and show us what you can do.”

“Just what I will,” replied the other promptly.

It was a pretty long shot for Jimmy. He seemed to doubt his ability to do the needful, without having some sort of rest for his gun.

“Jack, will you do me a favor?” he asked.

“Sure I will, Jimmy; just name it,” was the reply.

“Be my gun rest, won’t you now; because I’d like to do for that pirate the worst kind, but ’tis thinkin’ I am that it’s a bit too far for me. What I’ve gone through lately has made me hand a little unsteady, like.”

Jack was accommodating enough to back up in front of the intended sharpshooter and arrange himself in such fashion that Jimmy could rest his rifle on one of his shoulders.

“There you are,” he remarked, placing fingers in both ears, so that the report might not deafen him. “I’ll hold as steady as Gibraltar Rock, Jimmy, so if you miss you mustn’t go and lay the blame on me, hear?”

“Easy now, and I’m off!” muttered the other, as he took aim.

The sharp report sounded a couple of seconds later.

“Bully for you, Jimmy!” shouted Jack, immediately.

“Did I get him?” cried the delighted marksman.

“Did you!” echoed Harry, “look at him circling down to the ground right now! You knocked him galley-west, I should say, if I was on a boat now. Go and get your game, Jimmy, and let’s see the old buccaneer.”

“Bring in the dinner he caught, too,” remarked Ned, “I’m curious to see what it is; because it didn’t look like any wild bird around here.”

“And be careful how you handle the hawk, if he’s only winged,” warned Jack, “for they can fight like all get-out, and the first thing he’ll try to get at will be your eyes. Knock him on the head, Jimmy, before you handle him.”

“Shucks! tell me somethin’ I don’t know!” laughed the other, starting off, gun in hand, toward the trees growing along the same stream that passed the door of Hy Adams’ dugout, some three miles away.

He came back after a little while carrying a dead hawk.

“It was a fine shot, for a fact!” admitted Jack, as he took the bird into his hands, the better to see where the bullet had struck.

“What’s that you’ve got besides, Jimmy?” asked Harry.

“Me to the foolish house if it don’t make me think of a pet pigeon I used to have long ago,” Jimmy ventured.

“It is a pigeon,” said Ned, as he handled the dead bird that had been chased and captured by the hungry hawk.

“What’s that, Ned; a tame pigeon out here on the plains?” Jack questioned.

“Well, there are no wild pigeons any more, all gone,” Ned explained, “and this bird is a passenger pigeon or a carrier. You can see from the odd shape of its bill.”

“What they call a homing pigeon, you mean, don’t you, Ned?” asked Harry.

“Just that,” was the reply, “and here, as sure as you live, there’s a message tied with a thread to his leg, right now. Why, somebody must have been experimenting sending a message back home by this air post.”

“Blast that old hawk, he spoiled the whole game!” muttered Jimmy, wrathfully.

“But stop and think, Jimmy,” Harry told him, “if it hadn’t been for the hawk you shot, we wouldn’t have known about this thing at all. But there’s Ned opening the little piece of tissue paper on which the message is written. Tell us about it, Ned, won’t you?”

The scout master was staring at the thin piece of paper he had smoothed out, as though it contained certain information that interested him deeply.

And as the other three scouts gathered around him, eagerly waiting until he took them more fully into his confidence, they seemed to feel as though the very air was charged with a fresh supply of mystery.

CHAPTER X.
AT DOUBLE CROSS RANCH

The first words spoken by Ned added to the puzzle, for he turned to his chums and propounded a question.

“Did any of you happen to notice which way the pigeon was flying, before the hawk darted out from the trees and chased it?”

“Yes,” Jack informed him promptly, “I saw the bird coming away in the distance, and it was flying as straight as an arrow, when the hawk shot up out of the screen of the trees and made it swerve to try and escape; but it wasn’t quick enough.”

“Which way was it coming then?” asked Ned.

Jack pointed toward the southeast.

“Right yonder and in the same direction we’re heading,” he replied.

Ned frowned and looked even more serious.

“Then it begins to look as though this messenger pigeon might have been freed from somewhere about your uncle’s ranch, Harry, and was making for its coop when the hawk killed it. You know they’ve been known to fly hundreds and hundreds of miles, even from New York to Pittsburgh, and arrive safe, tired, and half-starved after a couple of days.”

“It always did beat my time how they did it,” said Jack, “though what you say is true, every word of it, Ned. But what is there so stunning about the fact of this bird having been set loose at the ranch? Some puncher may be a homing pigeon fancier and sends a bird to his home, many miles away, once in so often. It would be a great little stunt, I should think.”

“Yes, ditto here,” added Harry, “so tell us why you think it’s queer, Ned.”

“On account of the message,” replied the scout master.

“Well, we don’t know what that is, so read it out!” urged Jack.

“All right, I will,” Ned told them, and then glancing down once more at the thin piece of paper he held he continued: “‘Some talk of both bosses going to W. soon. Be ready to act. Will let you know in time! Chances good for big sweep! We count five!’”

“Glory hallelujah! what’s all that patter mean?” gasped Jimmy, who seemed unable to make head or tail out of the communication.

Jack and Harry, however, realized that Ned was about right when he said it looked as though there might be more in the message than appeared on the bare face.

“You notice that it says two bosses, don’t you?” asked Ned.

“Yes, and that must refer to my two uncles, Colonel Job Haines and James Henshaw?” Harry suggested.

“What does the W mean?” asked Jack.

“I think that must be a town on the railroad, where they ship the cattle in season,” replied Ned.

“‘Be ready to act,’ it goes on to say,” Jack continued, “which would make it appear as though the writer knew there was some sort of a raid contemplated.”

“A raid!” echoed Jimmy, “faith, d’ye mean by rustlers?”

“That’s the only kind of raid cattlemen fear nowadays, since the wild animals have been well cleaned out and the reds stick to their reservations pretty much all the time,” Harry informed him, “but just to think of what this would stand for, if it’s true.”

“A traitor or traitors employed at the Double Cross Ranch,” the scout master declared. “Well that wouldn’t be the first time such a thing had happened. In fact, these cattle rustlers usually have means for learning all that is going on with the punchers. In that way, they manage to time their raids when most of the hands are away. Seems that there might be quite a bunch of the hounds, because he mentions the fact that the party he’s sending the message to can count on five to muss things up at the time the raid is engineered.”

Harry laughed grimly.

“Perhaps, now, my Uncle Job won’t be tickled half to death to get hold of this telltale message!” he gurgled. “If only he can find who wrote the same, it’ll turn out to be his Waterloo, believe me, if half I’ve heard about Uncle Job is true.”

“And that ought to be easy,” remarked Jack.

“You mean, he could tell from the handwriting?” Harry demanded.

“Yes, but there would be a better way than that,” the other scout continued, as he gave Ned a knowing nod.

“’Tis the pigeon, you must mean!” exclaimed Jimmy.

“That’s it,” Jack acknowledged, “and surely a fellow couldn’t keep birds like that and set one flying every once in so often, without others knowing about it. Find the puncher who’s got the homing pigeon fancy and you’ll have the leader of the spies at the Double Cross, if that’s where the bird started from.”

The scout master nodded his head approvingly.

“That was well figured out, Jack,” he said, “and did your scout logic credit. A scout has got to keep his wits sharpened and not let anything slip past him, no matter how small it may seem. Of course, the owner of the pigeon must be guilty; and, just as you say, it wouldn’t be easy for him to carry on with his birds unless most of the other punchers knew about it.”

“But the message?” Jimmy objected.

“Oh! they didn’t see this one, but another that the fellow would be smart enough to get up, and pretend to fasten to the leg of the air traveler,” Jack went on to say, in a way that showed how his mind had grasped the subject.

Ned carefully folded the tissue paper and put it safely away in his pocketbook.

“That was the luckiest shot you ever made, I take it, Jimmy,” he remarked, turning to the freckled-faced chum, who immediately puffed his chest out in a ridiculous fashion and began to pretend to take on airs.

“Oh! the rest of you can do some stunts once in a coon’s age,” he told them, “but when it comes right down to taking the cake, you have to apply to your Uncle Jimmy. I managed to land there with both feet. Luck and me, we’re bedfellers, you see. But then, far from me ’twould be to boast. It was a fair shot, Ned, I admit it. And the McGraw luck held good.”

“You’ll have to let me in on a little of that, Jimmy,” Jack told him, “because you happened to be using my shoulder at the time, remember. Only for that, chances are you’d have lost the hawk and we’d never have known that it was a homer he had caught for his lunch.

“Shake on that, Jack; you’re in,” Jimmy was quick to say.

“But we’d better be going on, hadn’t we?” Harry asked. “Because I’m more anxious now than ever to pull up at the ranch house.”

“Yes,” Ned informed them, “we’ve got a long walk ahead of us yet. I’ll do up the pigeon and the hawk to show your uncle, on the quiet, when there’s no one else around. You see, he’s apt to think we may be yarning, because it’s a queer and fishy story, come to think of it; and the more proof we have the better.”

“Takes you to look away ahead,” declared Jack; “now, like as not, I’d have tossed both birds away and then wished I hadn’t later on. An ounce of prevention is better than a pound of cure, they say. The fellow who can think ahead takes the cake.”

“Then I’m goin’ to get busy and be that feller,” Jimmy assured them, “because I always did like cake.”

The forward march was resumed, with the three burros plodding along after their accustomed slow method of travel. They had to be urged frequently, with the tickle of a whip. The only times they showed traces of eagerness were when approaching places where water could be had, and then they almost ran.

As the afternoon wore along, the scouts knew that they were drawing near a cattle ranch. Many things told them this pleasing news. They found tracks of droves all about them on the grassy plain, and three times had they glimpsed a feeding herd in the swale, where some low hills joined the more level ground.

“I can see houses among the trees ahead there!” announced Ned, after he had had the field glasses up to his eye for a short time.

All of them wanted to take a look, then, and great was the rejoicing when it was found to be true.

“About two miles more of this weary hiking, and then good-bye to it!” Jack gave as his opinion, in which the other joined.

They took a fresh start after that, and it was not long before Jimmy declared he could see a bunch of riders starting out from the trees and heading toward them.

“They’ve sighted us,” asserted Ned, “and, of course, wonder who we can be; because Harry here thought to take his uncles by surprise and didn’t tell them when to expect us, except to say, we’d probably drop in on the ranch if down this way.”

“You see,” Harry went on to explain, “when I wrote last, it was from Los Angeles; and, about that time, I didn’t feel so sure we’d ever get through alive.”

“First time I knew you felt worried,” Ned told him. “All of you seemed so dead set on carrying out the programme that I couldn’t say what I thought.”

“You must mean,” Jack said, “that it looked silly and foolish to think we could cross the deserts and mountain canyons in that old rantankerous automobile?”

Ned laughed.

“Never mind what I thought,” he remarked. “It’s too late now to cry over spilt milk. We got through, didn’t we? And we’ve had experiences that will always stay with us. That’s enough. And, at last, we can see our goal just ahead.”

“Hurrah for the Double Cross Ranch!” exclaimed Jimmy.

The half-dozen cowboys came whirling toward them, shouting, swinging their hats, and riding as only punchers on the plains can.

“Remember, everybody,” warned Ned, “not a word about that hawk and pigeon episode.”

“We understand what you mean, Ned,” Harry replied.

Presently the mad riders came galloping up in a cloud of alkali dust.

“Told you so, boys!” cried a tall rangy fellow, who sat his pony as though he might be a part of the animal – one of those Centaurs of old. “Ketch on to the scout togs, would you? Say, are you Harry Stevens?”

He had unconsciously picked out Ned when asking this question, because he must have somehow seen that he was the leader; perhaps, it was partly from his looks; and, then again, the fact that Ned had no burro to take care of, while all his companions did, may have had something to do with it.

“No, but I’m his chum, Ned Nestor. That’s Harry over yonder, and I reckon now that we’re glad to be at the Double Cross.”

“But where’d you come from, pard?” demanded the cowboy, who had thrown one leg over his saddle, the better to talk.

“Los Angeles,” replied Ned, indifferently.

At that the punchers stared and even exchanged various winks and nods.

“Not with them lazy burros, I opine, pard?” ventured the spokesman.

“Oh! no, we picked these up in the hills, buying them from prospectors, who had had enough and were meaning to go home,” Ned informed him.

“That was after our automobile broke down and had to be abandoned, in the middle of the Mojave Desert,” Harry volunteered.

The cow-puncher gave a whistle to indicate his surprise. Ned noticed that his manner had changed somewhat, too. Doubtless, because these boys were from the East and somewhat green with regard to ranch ways, he may have imagined, in the beginning, that they were genuine tenderfeet.

He knew better now. Any party of boys who could by themselves cross that terrible Mojave Desert and make their way down to this country bordering the Colorado River, must surely be made of the right stuff.

“Get up behind me, Ned, and ride the rest of the way; proud to have you join us. And we reckons as how we’ll give you the time of your life while you’re at the old Double Cross Ranch.”

Ned promptly accepted this invitation on the part of the lanky puncher, whom he heard called “Chunky,” probably because he was just the opposite; while a real fat roly-poly sort of a rider answered, when they addressed him as “Skinny,” which made it look as though these boys might have drawn the wrong slips out of the hat at the ranch christening.

Jack, Harry and Jimmy were all similarly accommodated with seats, while two other punchers promised to see that the pack animals got in.

A wild ride they made of those two miles. The scouts clasped their arms around their new friends and held on for dear life; but none of them fell off and presently they found themselves in front of the ranch house.

“Sorry to tell ye, Harry,” announced the lanky puncher, “that both your uncles, together with a couple of the boys, has headed for the railroad, to fetch home a bunch of imported stock they sent for, meaning to improve the breed of our long horns. So ye’ll have to wait two days or so before you see ’em; but Aunt Mehitabel, she’s inside, and will make you all welcome, sure thing.”

With that the four punchers were off again, doubtless to attend to some of the duties they were hired to perform.

The four boys stood there exchanging significant looks, as the sun drew near the distant western horizon.

“Looks some serious, don’t it?” remarked Harry.

“Both bosses have gone away just as that message said,” Jack observed. “I wonder, now, if these conspirators will try to send another communication to their rustler friends.”

“I’m afraid that has already been done,” Ned told them, “and we were powerless to stop it. Because just as we rode up, I saw a pigeon flying in by circles high up in the air; then, as if it had gotten its bearings, it went off on a straight line into the northwest. That bird must have carried the news that the time to strike had come.”