CHAPTER IX.
THE HOMING PIGEON.
"What are we turning aside for, Ned?" and as Jimmy asked this questionhe laid a hand on the arm of the scout master, having pushed up frombehind, leading the pack animal that had been given over to his chargeafter his own was lost.
"Why," replied Ned, readily enough, "you see, Amos lives over amongthose trees, where there's a little stream, and he hinted prettybroadly that, while we were passing, he'd like us to meet up with hismother."
"Oh! that's all right," Jimmy asserted. "I've taken quite a liking forthe kid and a little rest will do the bunch good, anyway. One thingI'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," remarkedJack, from a point near by.
"Never again for me to start our on a trip afoot while I'm here in thishot country!" Jimmy declared solemnly, holding up his hand, as thoughhe were in the witness box. "What sillies we were not to have thoughtof that instead of putting our good cash into that bunco automobilethat played out before it even got decently started."
"It seems that we've all learned our little lesson," Ned admitted, "andafter this we ride, if we go at all. Cars may do very well, where thereare half-way decent roads; but out on the sandy desert and on theplains give me a broncho every time.
"But say, are you fellows noticing how jolly this scenery is aroundhere?" Harry wanted to know just then, from the rear. "Look at thatsage brush on the slope of that low hill over to the right. It must bebreast high to a horse, and seems like I could smell its fragrance awayoff here. How gray it looks, except where the wind waves it and then itseems 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 seethe 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 seeus coming," remarked Jack. "Yes, Harry, you're right, this is worthlooking at. Why, I wouldn't be surprised now, if at night-time, youcould hear the drowsy chirp of the crickets and the shrill rattle ofkatydids around here. A bigger contrast to what we went through in thatdesert you couldn't imagine."
"It's sure all to the good," asserted Jimmy, "and I don't blame thatmother of Amos for pitching her dugout in this particular region. Butmebbe 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 andknows where he's pretty sure to get an antelope, anyhow," Jack remarked.
They were now approaching the trees in which some sort of humanhabitation evidently had been constructed, for smoke was seen curlinglazily upward.
It proved to be one of those half-dugout, half-building which is to befound in many parts of the Wild West where lumber is scarce. As therewas practically no winter weather in this part of the country, itanswered all purposes, though far from a thing of beauty.
Still, that mother of Amos' had brightened things up more or less, sothat it could be seen the hand of a woman was around. A small gardenlay back of the house, surrounded by a wire fence to keep animals fromdevouring 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 wasfastened to the pack of his burro. Jimmy's dislike for wolves wasshared by dogs of all kinds. He said it must have been born in him,since he could not remember ever having had any desperate adventurewith canine foes while a kid.
Amos, however, threw oil on the troubled waters and, at the sound ofhis 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 theyloved him. And, doubtless, instinct told each beast that those incompany of the young master must also be friends; for, when Nedwhistled and snapped his fingers, one of the dogs immediately startedto approach, wagging his tail in a neighborly way.
A small-sized woman had come out of the dugout and stood there with ahand shading her eyes, as though to see who might be approaching. Nednoticed that she carried a shotgun in her other hand, and it struck himthat a woman who might often be left at home alone in this strangecountry 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 goabout her. When Amos introduced the boys and told what a great favorthey had done him, she went around shaking hands in an odd way; butevidently Mrs. Adams differed from the vast majority of her sex, forshe 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, "seemslike 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 ablustering man. Opposites seem to attract in this world; you've seen aspeck of a girl pick out the tallest feller she could find, and theother way, too."
"Yes, it does look like that, Jimmy," admitted Ned, as he tried todiscover some trace of spunk about the little woman, and utterly failed.
"Chances are," Jimmy continued, in his reflective way, "that when thisbad 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, Ican just see that poor timid little thing cowering down like a scaredpuppy when it hears its master raging. But, then, mebbe Amos he hangsaround to sort of protect his maw; though it don't seem as if a smallchap like him could do much along that line."
"If he does, he didn't think it right to do any boasting that I canremember," Ned replied, again studying the mistress of the dugout, butwithout much success.
Mrs. Adams insisted on their resting a short while and taking a cup ofcoffee with her. Apparently, she had some means of her own, for thereseemed to be plenty to do with in the place; and when the boys saw thebunks used for sleeping they pronounced them not at all bad. IndeedJimmy promptly began yawning; and, if any one had invited him to testone of the bunks, the chances are he would have only too willinglycomplied.
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 hertroubles in being mated to a human hurricane like Hy Adams had takenall the life out of her, and hence she evinced but little interest inwhatever happened.
Amos, as if to cover up this lack of conversational gifts on the partof his mother, kept the boys busy telling some of their pastadventures. And, finally, Ned advised that they had better be gettingready to pull out, as considerable territory remained to be coveredbefore they could expect to reach the cattle ranch buildings.
"You'll sure look us up before long, Amos?" he said to the lad, as theyshook hands at parting.
"I should say yes," added impulsive Jimmy; "because I'd hate to think Iwasn't goin' to see you again."
Amos looked serious.
"I did promise you, didn't I?" he observed slowly, "and when I says athing I nigh always keep my word; but I kinder reckon as how I mightn'tbe welcome over to the Double Cross Ranch."
"You mean, because you have the hard luck to be connected with a badman like Hy Adams?" Harry remarked. "But don't bother about a littlething like that. My two uncles are the kind of men who judge a fellowby what he's done himself, and not by his relations. Why, we had a badegg in our family once, and seems to me he was hung or something of thekind. But that's no reason I ought to be, is it?"
"Er, I don't know about that," muttered Jimmy, with a sparkle in hisfun-loving blue eyes.
The good-byes were said, and the scouts started again toward thesoutheast. Amos had given them full directions, so that there was nopossibility of their going wrong. And as the day was far cooler thanmany they had experienced of late, all of them were feeling
in finespirits.
They watched the buzzards lazily wheeling around high up in theheavens, apparently bent on finding out where they could get their nextmeal.
"What a fine view they must have of the plain up there," Harry happenedto remark; "makes me think of when we went up with those aviators, whohad the dirigible balloon near the border of Death Valley and wereexperimenting in dropping bombs down, just like will be done in thenext big war between the Nations, when battleships must give way toaeroplanes and submarines."
"Watch that hawk, will you!" cried Jack, "see how he is chasing afterthat 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 littlebirds whenever they feel like having a bite. Hey! he got the innocentthat rush, didn't he? Oh! wouldn't I just like to get a shot at themurderer, though!"
Jimmy, of course, forgot this was the daily business of the hawk andthat he only slew when he was hungry and not for pleasure. He alsoforgot that many men who call themselves _sportsmen_ persist in killinggame or game fish long after they have reached the limit of disposingof the same for food and even throw the victims of their cruelty asidein heaps--the more shame to their claim to manhood.
"Well, perhaps you may have a chance to play the noble role ofavenger," chuckled Jack, "that is, if you can shoot straight; becauseyou notice the hawk has now flown with his prey to that dead treetopand 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 todo 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 piratethe 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 intendedsharpshooter and arrange himself in such fashion that Jimmy could resthis rifle on one of his shoulders.
"There you are," he remarked, placing fingers in both ears, so that thereport 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 rightnow! 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 seewhat 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," warnedJack, "for they can fight like all get-out, and the first thing he'lltry to get at will be your eyes. Knock him on the head, Jimmy, beforeyou handle him."
"Shucks! tell me somethin' I don't know!" laughed the other, startingoff, gun in hand, toward the trees growing along the same stream thatpassed 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 birdinto 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 Iused to have long ago," Jimmy ventured.
"It _is_ a pigeon," said Ned, as he handled the dead bird that had beenchased and captured by the hungry hawk.
"What's that, Ned; a tame pigeon out here on the plains?" Jackquestioned.
"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 theodd 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 amessage tied with a thread to his leg, right now. Why, somebody musthave 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 thehawk you shot, we wouldn't have known about this thing at all. Butthere's Ned opening the little piece of tissue paper on which themessage is written. Tell us about it, Ned, won't you?"
The scout master was staring at the thin piece of paper he had smoothedout, as though it contained certain information that interested himdeeply.
And as the other three scouts gathered around him, eagerly waitinguntil he took them more fully into his confidence, they seemed to feelas though the very air was charged with a fresh supply of mystery.