Part 33 (1/2)

Jo shuddered. ”Thank Heaven I was blindfolded!” was her grateful thought. ”But how ridiculous, boys! A razor! If they'd wanted to kill me, at least one of them had a gat. Ask Hiram.”

”Maybe they was just goin' to cut you loose and tell you why they'd swiped you, when the Gentle Wild Cat went wild again,” suggested Gulick.

”Cut a perfectly good lariat!” Jo picked it up. ”Couldn't they have untied the knots?”

Gulick took the lariat and examined it. ”Thirty-five feet,” he said.

”Rawhide--six-strand plait Been rubbed with cow's liver to soften 'er, too. What else? Whoop! What's this?”

He was studying the honda, also of rawhide, pressed flat when soaked and riveted in shape, a plaited b.u.t.ton on the end of the lariat proper to keep it from slipping through the hole.

”Letters cut in this,” Gulick announced. ”T. H.' Who's that stand for?”

All went silent for a time, thinking; then Hiram Hooker said quietly, as if what he suggested mattered but little:

”Tehachapi Hank.”

All talked at once now. Not one was there that was not sure Hiram had hit upon a clew.

”And Tehachapi Hank's a bad man,” said Heine. ”Admitted it himself.

And he's a side-kick of that cholo-faced Drummond!”

Study of the razor, now red with rust, showed the amateur detectives nothing.

”And ye saw only the face of one of 'em, Hiram?” Blink Keddie asked it.

”Only one. The others managed to keep their masks on.”

”Tehachapi Hank and Al Drummond them other two was,” said McAllen positively. ”Too bad it wasn't one o' them you knocked the mask off of, Wild Cat.”

”And you never saw this fella that you got a look at?” asked Schultz.

Hiram shook his head. ”I didn't even see him well,” he added.

”Through revolver smoke--and the rain pouring--and next instant his face didn't look like anything much. That was a wicked old pine knot.”

”I'll say she was, boy! But about the razor?” Keddie kept on.

Again Hiram could not answer.

”Why, that's easy!” laughed Heine Schultz. ”They was gonta give Jo a shave!”

Jo and Hiram walked together behind the rest and talked as the party returned to the wagons. For the first time she told him of what her skinners had had to report when they were over their sickness following the doping at Ragtown. One and all, they said, they had been invited to the little cabin of the girl who ran the shooting gallery for a drink; after having fired several strings of shots and ”joshed” with her out in front. From there they had gone to the Palace, and afterward, being dazed and feeling drowsy, had wandered in a group into the Dugout, a place that they seldom frequented, and could remember nothing after that.

”Why--why--do they think Lucy doped them?” cried Hiram.

Jo shrugged. ”They can't remember drinking anywhere but with her and in the Palace,” she said. ”They got it one place or the other, Hiram.”

”The Palace, of course, then. Why--Lucy--she----”

”Is a friend of Al Drummond,” Jo helped him out, her red lips set.