CHAPTER XI.
THE PAPER TRAIL.
The coils hummed merrily to the six-cylinder accompaniment. The windwhistled and sang in the ears of the three who were plunging along at aspeed which was bound to get them somewhere in short order.
Then, as might be expected, something happened. It was no accident tothe car. The road spread apart in two equally well-traveled branches,and Matt shut off and came to a stop at the forks.
"The canvasman, of course," said the young motorist, looking around atBurton, "couldn't tell you which fork the monkey wagon would take."
"Here's a go!" muttered Burton. "If we take one fork, we may behustling off on the wrong scent. At a guess, I should say take theright-hand branch."
"Let's not do any guessing until we have to," Matt returned. "My cowboychum here is a good hand at picking up trails. Show us how they do itin Arizona, Joe."
McGlory was out of the car in a flash and giving his attention to thesurface of the road.
"You might as well try to hunt for the print of a rabbit's foot in thetrail of a herd of stampeded steers," said McGlory, after five preciousminutes spent in fruitless examination.
"What sort of a cowboy are you, anyhow?" scoffed Burton.
"Well, look," answered McGlory. "The ground is all cut up with peoplecoming to the show, and it's none too soft. I couldn't pick out thetread of a traction thrashing machine in all this jumble of prints."
"Any one coming on either road?" queried Burton, standing up andlooking. "If there is, we could inquire as to whether they'd passed themonkey wagon."
"See any one?" asked Matt.
"Not a soul," and the showman plumped disappointedly down in his seat.
"Just a minute, Joe," interposed Matt, as the cowboy was about to climbback into the tonneau. "What's that white object in the road?" Mattpointed as he spoke. "There's one, just over the left-hand fork, andanother beyond it."
"If you stop to bother with paper scraps," cried Burton, "we'll neverget anywhere."
McGlory, however, turned back and picked up the object to which Matthad called his attention.
It was a scrap of paper, just as Burton had said. The scrap was aragged square, as though it had been roughly torn, and measured abouttwo inches across.
The cowboy examined it casually at first, then his face changed, and hegave it closer attention.
"My handwriting," he declared, looking up at Matt.
"How can that be?" scoffed Burton.
"I don't know how it can be," replied McGlory, "but it's a fact, allthe same. I had a memorandum book, and have jotted down various thingsin it."
"Where'd you leave the memorandum book?" jested the showmanimpatiently; "in the monkey wagon?"
"Nary, I didn't. I left it in the hip pocket of my working clothes."
"And Carl had on the clothes!" exclaimed Matt, with a jubilant ring inhis voice. "Carl must have scattered that trail for our benefit."
He stood up in the automobile and looked back over the road they hadtraveled.
"Why," he went on, "we haven't been as observing as we should havebeen. There's a paper trail, and Carl must have started it pretty soonafter the monkey wagon left the show grounds."
"Well, well!" muttered Burton. "Say, Matt, that Dutch chum of yours isquite a lad, after all. The idea of his thinking of that."
"Carl always has his head with him," declared Matt. "Climb in, Joe. Theleft fork for ours."
McGlory pulled the crank, before he got in, for the stop had killed theengine.
"It's a cinch," said McGlory, as he resumed his place in the tonneau,"that Carl wasn't hypnotized when he dropped those scraps. How _could_he drop 'em? That's what beats me. Why, he was locked in, so Ping said."
"There was a hole in the floor," explained Burton. "Not a very big one,but big enough for an ant-eater to get a foot through. I was going torepair the cage, but haven't had time to attend to it."
"Why didn't Carl yell again?" went on McGlory. "If he had yelled longenough, and loud enough, some one would have been bound to hear him andstop Ben Ali."
"This is another case where Carl's using his head," put in Matt. "He'splaying some dodge or other."
"He's showing up a whole lot stronger than I ever imagined he could,"said the cowboy. "I had sized him up for a two-spot at any sortof headwork. Got my opinion, I reckon, from the way those Chicagodetectives fooled him."
"He's not so slow as you imagine, Joe," said Matt. "Now keep an eye outfor scraps!"
"We can't get into a scrap with those Hindoos any too quick to suitme," laughed McGlory, hanging out over the side of the motor car.
Once more the whirling, headlong rush of the car was resumed. No soonerhad Burton, or McGlory, discovered a bit of white in the roadway aheadthan it was lost to sight behind.
Then, after four or five miles of this, the three in the car raisedan object, drawn up at the roadside, which brought the car to a halt.The object was the monkey wagon, horse gone from the shafts, rear doorswinging open, and not a soul in the vicinity.
"Here's another queer twist," grumbled Burton, as all three got out tomake a close survey of the wagon. "What do you think of it, Matt?"
Matt and McGlory thrust their heads in at the door.
"Phew!" gurgled the cowboy, drawing back. "There's a mineral well, inLafayette, that's a dead ringer for the smell inside that cage wagon."
"I haven't had it swabbed out yet," apologized Burton.
"Here's the hole where Carl dropped out the paper scraps," Matt called,from inside the wagon.
"And here's something else, pard!" yelled McGlory.
Matt came out of the wagon and found his cowboy chum calling Burton'sattention to marks in the road.
"What do you make of it, Joe?" asked Matt, coming closer.
"Well," answered McGlory, reading the "signs," "a one-horse buggy withrubber tires stopped here, alongside the monkey wagon. Look how theroad's tramped up, ahead there. The horse was restive during the halt,and did some pawing."
"Great guns!" murmured Burton. "My runabout!"
"I think it's pretty clear now," observed Matt. "Aurung Zeeb and Haideedidn't get away at the same time Ben Ali and Carl did, or else theytook a different course. Anyhow, they came up with the wagon. Therunabout's faster, so the whole party went on with it."
"They might get three people into the runabout, by crowding," saidBurton, "but they never could get four people into it."
"That's why the horse was taken from the monkey wagon," went on Matt."Aurung Zeeb or Ben Ali must have ridden the animal."
"By Jove, King, I wish I had your head for getting at things! That wasthe way of it--it _must_ have been the way of it. Let's pile back intothe machine and hustle on."
They all felt that the chase was drawing to a close. The runabout was afaster vehicle than the monkey wagon, but there was not the ghost of ashow for the Kentucky horse getting away from the automobile.
From that point on, the paper trail was not in evidence.
"Carl wasn't able to drop any more scraps," said Matt. "When he wasinside the monkey wagon he was out of sight and could do about as hepleased; crowded into the runabout with Ben Ali and Haidee, and withAurung Zeeb riding behind, he couldn't possibly drop a clue to guideus."
"The Dutchman seems to have taken it for granted that he'd befollowed," hazarded Burton.
"He knows very well," returned Matt, "that I wouldn't stand aroundand let him worry through this run of hard luck alone. Look out forthe runabout. The way I figure it, the rig can't be more than ten orfifteen minutes ahead of us."
"How do you figure it, Matt?" asked Burton.
"Well, from the time Joe and I heard Carl call for help. I don'tbelieve it was more than half an hour from that time until we werehitting the high places with this automobile. Eh, Joe?"
"No more than that, pard," answered McGlory.
"I should think we'd have gained more than fifteen or twenty minutes onthe Hindoos, the rate we've been coming," remarked Burton.
br /> "Possibly we have. If that's so, then the runabout can't be even tenminutes ahead of us. Now----"
"Runabout!" yelled McGlory.
He was standing up in the tonneau and peering ahead. The road, at thispoint, was bordered with heavy timber on both sides, but in half aminute Matt and Burton could each see the vehicle to which the cowboyhad called their attention.
It wasn't a runabout, as it proved, but a two-seated "democrat" wagon,drawn by a team, and conveying another party townward--presumably forthe evening performance of the Big Consolidated.
McGlory's disappointment was keen. And his feelings, for that matter,were matched by those of Motor Matt and Burton.
Matt halted the automobile and, when the wagon came alongside, askedthe driver if he had been passed by a runabout farther along the road.
The party had come five miles on that road and, according to thedriver, hadn't been passed by anything on wheels going the other way.
For a space those in the automobile were in a quandary.
"What's amiss?" fumed Burton. "Are we on the wrong track, after all, inspite of your Dutch friend and his paper trail, and McGlory's readingthe signs at the monkey wagon?"
Matt suddenly threw in the reverse and began to turn.
"Only one thing could have happened," he averred.
"What's that?"
"Why, the people in the runabout must have heard us coming and turnedfrom the road into the woods."
"Let her out on the back track, then!" cried Burton. "If the Hindoosthink they've dodged us, they've probably pulled out into the road andstarted the other way."
This seemed to have been the case, for three minutes speeding over thereturn trail brought those in the automobile in sight of the runabout.
This time it _was_ the runabout, and no mistake, and the Kentucky cobwas stretching out like a race horse under the frantic plying of a whip.
Burton reached behind him, under his coat, and brought a revolver intoview.
"We'll find out about this business before we're many minutes older!"he exclaimed grimly.