Page:Rover Boys on the Plains.djvu/146



" know as we want anything of you," said Dick. "We chanced to be riding by, that is all."

"Oh!" The man looked relieved and let his hand drop from his pistol pocket. "Are you alone?"

"No, there is quite a crowd of us."

At this, the man leaped up and looked out of the open doorway of the shack. His face fell again when he saw so many, and all well mounted.

"May I ask what you are doing here?" he questioned, turning his sharp eyes on Dick once more.

"We are doing a bit of traveling overland. We were on a houseboat, but we got tired of riding on the Mississippi."

"I see. One of them 'personally conducted tours' a feller reads about in them magazines, eh?"

"That is pretty close to it," and Dick smiled, more to throw the man off his guard than anything else. He did not like the looks of the stranger in the least.