Beadle's New York Dime Library, No. 454 — page 9: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

‘was little sympath , r. & > * . _— + + - . ; 4 2 *> found Mrs. Halsey and Jack, who greeted him coldly but politely. Mainly for their benefit he hastened to repeat the little yarn that was to account for his pres- ence there. There was not much of it—merely an unim- rtant statement concerning the doings of Dan arkell and his friends, and it did not von te to be true, as Sander had not been in Oro Fino since his first visit to Small Hopes Ranch; but that point was not likely to be discovered by his auditors. Directly Mrs. Halsey went out to look after supper, and Jack followed her, leaving the de- tective alone with Victoria. ‘**T can’t believe, Mr. Sander,” she said pleas- antly, ‘‘that the little story you told us was your real reason for coming here to-day. Con- fess, now, that you came to see me,” “T do confess it, Miss Halsey. It ee seems to me an age since | last saw you, and hoped to hear from you, but got no word. There was another reason, too, though that is a matter of pure selfishness on my part.” ** What 1s the other reason?” ““T have fallen in love with that beautiful black mare of yours, and I wanted to ask you if by any possibility you could be induced to sell er ‘* Sell Myra?” indignantly exclaimed the gir). ‘*T would have to sell myself with her, then. Of course I would not part with m beauty and my pet. And that reminds me, Mr. Sander, of a dreadful dream I had last night—a dream that made me doleful all day.” ‘‘ What was that terrible dream?” inquired the detective, who felt that he might be on the eve of a revelation. ‘*T dreamed that the darling was dead, that she had got a terrible fall—I don’t know how— and had been killed.” If Smart Aleck had put his thought into words, it would have been something like this: **Oho! she knows that I suspect her, or a guilty conscience needs no accuser. Now I may expect to hear a story that has been manufac- tured to account for the absence of the black mare. But it will not deceive me, and I shall insist upon knowing how it is that she is not also missing.”’ ‘** What he did say was this: ‘*] hope that when you awoke you did not dis- cover that your dream was true? ‘‘T am happy to say that I did not, though the very thought of it has bothered me all day. My- ra was quite well, except that she bad hurt her nigh fore foot by getting it caught in the fence, I su _ Hart her nigh fore foot! Sander was certain that something much worse than that was the matter with the black mare which he had left at the foot of the cliff. If the girl was speaking the truth, the fabric of his suspicions, which were almost positive proofs, ha tumbled down. ‘** Poor thing!” said the detective, though there in his tone justthen. ‘* Sup- pose we go out andi see her.” *‘ Just what I was going to ask you todo. Jack has been making a warm mash for her, and I want to give it to her, if he will keep that brute of a bay horse off while she eats it.” The three went out together—Jack with the ia and Victoria and Smart Aleck following m, There in the grass lot were the two horses— the fine bay gelding and the beautiful black mare—placidly cropping tbe short grass, just as in had seen them when he visited the ranch be- ore, As the detective was not capable of being stunned any more, be accepted this astounding fact as a fact, aud stared stupidly at tie two animals, principally at the black mare. Victoria called ‘‘ Myra!” and her pet, prick- ing up its ears, came trotting to her, and thrust its nose through the rails, while she patted and fondled it, Then Jack caught the bay horse and hitched him, and Victoria gave the mare the mash, watching her as she ate it, and pointing out the sore on her foot, which proved to be nothing but a scratch, He had nothing more to say about purchasing the mare, as the object of his visit had been ac- complished, greatly to his dissatisfaction. There was just one consolation for him, and that was found in the fact that Victoria Halse was not dead. Whoever had gone over the cliff, it was surely notshe, He accepted an invitation to stay to supper, which was extended to him as a matter of course; but nobody asked him to stay over night, and he left at an early hour, after secur- ing a promise from Victoria that she would trv to see him before long and ‘‘ talk over matters.” ** W hat did he come here to-day for, Victoria?” inquired Mrs. Halsey,when he had left the place. Don’t you know, ma? That is the man who chased Jack and me last night, and I was ever so glad that he did, as I had laida plan to bother him, and the plan worked admirably, Could it have worked better, Jack?” ‘‘It was too dangerous for you, dear,” an- swered her brother. 2. The danger was nothing—only a bit of fun, +. —_—_——— a eae eee eae ———————_- - e Ce Cee CU Fe CUD > OO O_o eee eee nnn rs The Night Raider. When I was sure that he had settled down to follow me, I bad him just where I wanted bim. The mare came near shying at the edge of the Ralph Harkness and Hermau Jonas came in, shortly followed by Ike Jonas. cliff, and then I was troubled for just the least | little part of a second. But she took the jump, | -Idomean. My idea was that Jack Halsey and and I swung myself off just as she went over, catching the low branch of a tree, and before he came near I was hid in a hole where he would never have thought of looking for me. Then I got down into the valley by a slant I knew, gobbled up my saddle and bridle, and was well on the way home when Jack found me and help- ed me.” ‘“You must not run any more such risks,” hesitated Mrs. Halsey. ‘*T don’t mean to, ma*none of that sort, any- how. The profit don’s pay for the trouble and risk, We must try some other way of worry- ing Simon Jonas—some way that will hurt him worse, though it does sting him terribly to get wounded in the pocket nerve.” ‘‘T would like to know what the detective ere could have become of syou,” observed ack. ‘*That is just what he came here to find out, | ' Jonas, *‘ that she and her brother had nothing to and if you had seen his face when I met him, you would have known what his thought was. Why, the sight of me nearly paralyzed him. Of course he had been out there at the foot of the cliff, and he hada sure thing on the black mare; so I paralyzed him again by showing him the beauty in the lot.” ‘* What will he believe now?” “What can he believe? It was easy to see that he suspected me, and that he meant to trap me if he could, Since he has become convinced that I could not have had anything to do with | the cattle raids, nobody will be able to make him believe anything against me.” ‘Who is it, then, sis, that has been getting away with the cattle?” ‘* That is for him to find out, and I don’t envy him the job, It seems to me that I must be out of his black list now, and of course you are with me, Jack. If heis sure that [had nothing to do with the business, he will have to look for some other girl and some other black mare.” CHAPTER XI. SIMON JONAS HAS DOUBTS, ‘Some other girl and some other black mare.” It was just the thought that was in Smart Aleck’s mind as he rode away from Small Hopes Ranch, and the mystery which he had hoped to mink so easily had proved to be too much for im. His theory had been so reasonable, and the facts had come in to fit it so beautifully, that he had been quite certain of discovering the criminals he was seeking; but suddenly he found his theories and facts destroyed together by the palpable presence of a girl and a black mare. Of course he was compelled to admit that it could not have been Victoria Halsey and her black mare whom he had chased the night be- fore, and yet he had been so strongly convinced of the identify of each of them that he would have sworn to it. As it was not Victoria Halsey, who was it? double? If so, what had become of the female person who went over the cliff? Was it all a figment of the brain, an illu- sion of the senses, a dream that was as bad as a nightmare? He was all at sea, or, rather, was thrown out into the darkness, and would be forced to gro bis own way from that time forward, with the additional disadvantage of knowing that the false clew would bother him in his efforts to find the true one. ‘What do you mean?’ demanded the old man. ‘* You don’t men to say that the gir!—” ‘* Let me tell it, and then you will know what his sister were the cattle-thieves.” ‘* Of course it was—mine too.” ** When I saw them and chased them night before last, I was sure of it, because I knew that they owned a horse and black mare, such as the thieves rode, and when the woman I was . chasing went over the cliff, 4 supposed that Victoria Halsey was dead.” “She ought to be, Lord knows!” interrupted the old man. “I hope you doh’t meant to say that she is alive and well.” ‘*Of course Harkness and Herman told you how we found the black mare at the foot of the cliff, and nothing else. Then I hurried to the Halsey Ranch to see what had become of the Halsey girl and her black mare, and there I found them both, not only alive and well, but as gay and chipper as you please.” “And so you conclude,” observed Simon do with stealing my cattle,” ‘What other conclusion can I come to? I can’t believe that she and her black mare went over the cliff, and therefore she and her brother were not the parties I chased that night.” The old man bent his brows and seemed to think deeply before he spoke again. ‘* She has fooled you,” he said, at last. ‘‘ And I am so easy to foel,” sneered the de- tective. ‘That girl would fool the devil, Mr. Sander. ° I know somethin give her credit trap.” ‘Will you kindly inform me how you think she can have fooled me?” **T don’t know how it was done, but she did it. That makes your job a tougher one, Mr. Sander; but the lines you were working on are, in my opinion, the same that you must continue to work on, and you now know the sort of thing you may expect.” ‘* What is to be done, then, in your opinion?” of her and her stock, and can or being as smart as a steel- ‘*'You will have to keep on watching for those — cattle-thieves and run them down, and catch them or kill them. For that purpose you shall have all the help you need, and I firmly believe that the result will be the wiping out of Tom Halsey’s rascally brood.” “What you suggest, Mr. Jonas, is the plan I had proposed to myself, though I doubt whether there will be any more raids.” ‘‘T think there will be. The scoundrels may wait a while, expecting this fuss to die out, but they are not likely to give up the business,” ‘* There can be no harm in supposing that some- body else may have been getting after your cat- tle. Is there no other young man and young woman in this region for whom those two may have been mistaken?” ‘* Nobody who can bave the same grudge that they claim to have. I don’t know much about the women in Oro Fino; but my son Isaac can probably give you all the information you want in that line.” Had she a double, and had her black mare a As far as he could see then, his only chance | would be to watch for the cattle-thieves again, and pursue them to the bitter end; ‘but as he could not persuade himself to doubt that one of them had actually gone over the cliff, he was strongly inclined to believe that there would be no more raids, to Simon Jonas just then, and he wanted to rest and turn the puzzle in his mind; so he went di- Ikey Jonas, who had been following the con- versation slowly, spoke up for himself, without noticing his father’s evident sneer. ‘There are plenty of ih there tough enough for such a job, and some of them may be smart enough, and of course they could get plenty of mento go in with them; but I. don’t know of any that I could put my finger on as being more liable to suspicion than the rest. If you folks will tell me all you know about those two—what they look like and all that—I — may be able to give some sort of a guess,” Aleck Sander, who had followed the raiders . pretty closely and had observed them keenly, gave as good a description as he could of their personal appearance, including their style of dressing and of their horses, and in this was as-— sisted by Rulph Harkness, who had also got a cS _ good view of them. He was unwilling to go and confess his failure © rect to Oro Fino and settled down for the night | at the hotel. In the morning he rode out to the Jonas Rauch, where he was eagerly and excitedly greeted by the proprietor. ‘* Come right in and tell me the news,” insisted the old man. ‘“ Why didn’t you show up here last night? From the message you sent, I ex- sted you, sure. What’s the matter with you? ou don’t look this time as if you had seen a host. Are you going to want some whisky be- ore you can tell?” ‘*T can speak plain enough when vou give me , Ikey. ——— a chance to get my words in,” answered Sander, | ‘“‘and I won’t object to the whisky, though I) you are of any service to us in this business, it_ I have struck will be the first useful thing you have done ina have not seen a ghost this time. something dead, though.” ‘Something dead? What is dead now?” The detective waited until he had sampled the ranchman’s liquor before he remarked: ‘*The deadest or that I know of is the notion I had in my thieves,” ead about those cattle- | * a. - : / ‘ ; bi ‘at ‘ , oe .F ie oie site & = (e a, wo : ’ 4 It was the opinion of those two that the cattle-— thieves, if they were not Jack Halsey and his sister, were enough like them to be easily mis- taken for them at a little distance. ‘¢That’s who it must be,” was the opinion of *“*T think the governor is right about that, and that he is right in saying that th ain’t likely to give up the business, I don know of any swer to that description; but of course ‘most anybody could dress in that style, and Gress goes _ for a good deal. I shall keep my eyes open, and if any such gang of two goes out of Oro Fino, I will be apt to know it.” ‘* And that will give you a good excuse,” sug- ted the old man, “‘ for spending all your time in Oro Fino, instead of three-fourths of it. If long time.” CHAPTER XII. NOT TO BE BLUFFED. Horace Exton and Carl Klein worked in- who are y in Oro Fino who would an- ~ - ” dustriously and patiently at their hole in the = JOOKS » > : er uf we o ’ ~~ “comic @ oe - . a