Page:Top-Notch Magazine, May 1 1915 (IA tn 1915 05 01).pdf/35

 Ruthven picked up the tan bluchers and looked them over curiously. There was nothing inside nor outside to arouse the least suspicion. He investigated the smashed pasteboard box, the torn wrapper, and even the cord. There was absolutely no clew to the mystery that had surrounded the package ever since McKenzie had passed it over the counter of the Burt City express office. At one side of the soiled and dusty wrapper Ruthven found the penciled cross which he had placed on the package for purposes of identification.

"What's on your mind?" asked Martin.

"Oh, nothing much," answered Ruthven wearily. "I've had a look inside the package when it weighed the heaviest, and all I've found is the footgear. This is enough to give a man a brain storm."

"Don't pester your mind with things you can't understand," advised the cowboy. "That's the shortest cut you can take to the crazy house. When Ginger and Pete git to the ranch some un will drive this way with another wagon to pick us up. I reckon we better collect all the freight in one place, and then sit down on it and wait."

This was a good idea. The cans of tomatoes, some of them badly dented, were gathered in and heaped in a pile, The flour was carried to the same spot, and then the bacon. On top of the plunder were placed Tom Barton's boots. While Ruthven worked he was thinking.

The man who had jumped into the road in front of the bronchos and leveled the six-guns was one whom Ruthven was confident he had never seen before. His voice had apparently not been disguised in the least, and it was strange in Ruthven's ears. But the other man, the one who had stepped out of the brush and walked toward the rear of the wagon, had somehow a familiar aspect. Without having seen his face, his build and bearing suggested Weasel Morrison. There had been no time to consider this point before, for the excitement connected with the bolting of the bronchos had left Ruthven a trifle bewildered, and with other things on his mind. Now the matter fairly forced itself on his attention.

Morrison, jumping from Seventeen between stations, could very easily have reached Dry Wash during the previous night by another passenger train or by a freight. But why was he there, on the trail to the ranch, making an attempt to hold up Martin and relieve him of that express package? Here was a clew which, if carefully followed, might solve the mystery of that Barton shipment.

Perhaps an hour and a half after the smash a man drove from the ranch with a team and buckboard and halted near the wreck and the two who were lounging in the shade by the pile of provisions.

"Don't you-all know how to drive, William?" the newcomer inquired.

"Don't try to rub it in, Hank Doubleday," growled Martin. "I reckon I've gone through a plenty without takin' any back talk from you. A couple o' road agents tried to hold us up and make off with the old man's boots."

"Go on!"

"And them long-legged trouble makers at the pole just nacherly cut loose and rambled across the landscape like a pair of skeered coyotes. That's a fact. This here," and Martin indicated the man beside him, "is Mr. Lewis Ruthven, Tom Barton's nephew from the lower ranch. He's goin' along to the Musselshell."

"I don't believe I'll go along, Martin," spoke up Ruthven.

"What!"

"Something ought to be done in the matter of those two chaps who tried to rob us. I guess I'll hoof it back to