Not understanding the meaning of it all, the cowmen drew back and slouched to their ponies. Most of them were off duty at the time, so they took their way back to camp to be ready for whatever emergency might arise.
Not a man of them spoke until they had staked their ponies and seated themselves around the camp-fire. Such a silence was unusual among the cowboys. Ned and Walter, who had followed them in, were standing aside, equally silent and thoughtful.
Shorty Savage was the first to speak.
"What"s it all about? That"s what I"d like to know," he asked.
"You won"t find out from me," answered Curley.
"Big-foot thinks he winged a spook," said a voice.
"Allee samee," chuckled Pong, who had been taking in the scene with mouth and eyes agape.
Big-foot fixed him with a baneful eye.
"I said I"d forget you were the cook some day," said he. "I"m forgetting it, now, faster"n a broncho can run!"
Pong"s pigtail bobbed up and down like the streaming neckkerchief of a cowboy in saddle as he dived for the protection of the trail wagon.
"I reckon he can understand king"s English when he wants to," laughed Shorty. "Now how about that spook, Big-foot?"
Sanders stood up, hitched his trousers and tightened his belt a notch.
"Reckon we"ve all gone plumb daffy, fellows. I"m the champeen dummy of the bunch."
The cowpunchers laughed heartily.
"But was she a spook?" persisted Shorty.
"She were not. She were a woman--a friend of the boss."
Shorty whistled.
"Lucky for me I missed her. I was rattled, or I"d never taken that shot."
"Who is she?" asked Curley.
"One of the young women from the Ox Bow. It gets me what she was doing in that spook place alone at night. I----"
"W-o-w!"
The exclamation was uttered by a familiar voice, at the sound of which the cowmen sprang to their feet.
"It"s the gopher!" they cried.
"Chunky!" shouted Ned and Walter, running forward with a yell.
"I fell in," wailed the fat boy.
At sight of him the cowboys yelled with merriment. Chunky"s clothes were torn. He was covered with dirt from head to foot, and his face was so grimy as to be scarcely recognizable.
Big-foot was staring at him in amazement. Striding forward, he grasped the lad roughly by the shoulder, jerking him into the full light of the camp-fire.
"Where you been, gopher?" he demanded sternly.
"I fell in," stammered the boy.
"Where?"
"Some kind of a well. It was in the bushes just outside the back door. I went there to hide. I fell down to the bottom and went to sleep."
"Just like him. Have anything to eat down there?" jeered Ned Rector.
"When I woke up it was dark. Then I found another hole--a pa.s.sage. It went both ways. Guess one end went under the church. I followed it the other way, and came out near where the steers are bedded down."
"Hold on a minute. Let"s get this straight," interrupted Curley. "You mean you found an underground pa.s.sage at the bottom of the old well? Is that it?"
Chunky nodded.
"And the opening was near the spring at the point of rocks just above the herd?"
"Yes. But I had to dig out through a brush heap."
"Huh! Not such a terrible mystery, after all," sniffed Curley contemptuously.
"How came that underground pa.s.sage there? What"s it for?" asked Big-foot.
"Probably dug out in Indian times. I"ll bet it has saved the scalp of more than one old fellow. There"s an opening into it from the church somewhere, you can depend upon that. I"m thinking, too, that the well was a bluff--that it wasn"t intended for water at all. We"ll smash the mystery of the adobe church before we pull out of here to-morrow, see if we don"t."
"I come mighty near doing for one of them," added Big-foot Sanders ruefully.
"Got anything to eat?" interrupted Stacy Brown.
"For goodness" sake, boys, take your fat friend over to the chuck wagon and fill him up. He"s like a Mexican steer--he"ll bed down safer when he"s full of supper."
In the meantime, another scene was being enacted off at the Ox Bow ranch--a scene that was to add still another chapter to the romance of the trail.
Tad Butler was sitting alone in the darkness on the steps of the McClure mansion. The boy, chin in hands, was lost in thought. Stallings had carried Ruth Brayton in his arms all the way to the ranch where she had soon revived.
After leaving her, the foreman and Colonel McClure had locked themselves in the library, where they remained in consultation for more than an hour.
"How is Miss Ruth?" asked the boy eagerly, when Stallings finally came out.
"Better than in many months," answered the foreman. There was a new note in his voice.
"I"m so glad," breathed Tad.