Chapter VI: M'glory Is Lost--And Found

This unexpected encounter with Sam Wing was certainly a "hot starter" in the matter of the stolen ruby, although of apparently small consequence in the matter of the stolen car. But Motor Matt was not particular as to which end of the double thread fortune wafted his way. He followed Sam Wing just as zealously as he would have followed Philo Grattan, had it been the white thief instead of the yellow who had fled from the spring.

The cold spring water had run down the cowboy's face, under his collar, and had glued his shirt to his wet skin.

"Speak to me about that!" he breathed angrily, as he labored on. "If the rat-eater hadn't slammed that water into my face, I'd have had him by his yellow throat in a brace of shakes! Wow, but it's cold! I feel as though I was hugging an iceberg. Where's Matt?"

McGlory had not seen his chum since he had plunged into the bushes, but had followed blindly in a course he believed to be the right one, trying only to see how much ground he could cover.

Now, realizing suddenly that he might be on the wrong track, the cowboy halted, peered around him, and listened intently. The timber was thick and the bushes dense on every side. There were no sounds in any direction even remotely suggesting the Chinaman's flight and Matt's pursuit.

"I'm off my bearings and no mistake," reflected the cowboy, searching the ground in vain for some signs of the course taken by Sam Wing and Matt. "Matt will have a time overhauling the chink in this chaparral, and the two of us are needed. But which way am I to go?"

McGlory had been hurrying along the side hill that edged the valley and the road. He swept his eyes across the narrow valley, and then up the slope toward the top of the hill.

"It's a cinch," he ruminated, "that Sam Wing wouldn't go near the trail, but would do his level best to get as far away from it as he could. That means, if I'm any guesser, that he climbed the hill and tried to lose himself beyond. Me for the other side," and the cowboy began pawing and scrambling up the steep slope.

Ten minutes of hard work brought him to the crest, and here again he halted to peer anxiously around and to listen. He could neither hear nor see anything that gave him a line on Matt and the Chinaman.

"Whoop-ya!" he yelled at the top of his lungs. "Matt! Where are you, pard?"

A jaybird mocked him from somewhere in the timber, and a frightened hawk took wing and soared skyward.

"Blamed if this ain't real excitin'!" growled the cowboy. "I'm going to do something to help lay that yellow tinhorn by the heels, though, and you can paste that in your hat. If Matt came over the hill, then it stands to reason he went down on this other side. I'll keep on, by guess and by gosh, and maybe something will happen."

McGlory kept on for half an hour, floundering through the bushes, making splendid time in his slide to the foot of the hill, and from there striking out on an erratic course that carried him toward all points of the compass. He climbed rocky hills and descended them, he followed ravines, and he sprinted across narrow levels, yelling for Matt from time to time, but receiving no answer. Then he discovered that something had happened--and that he was lost.

Trying to locate himself by the position of the sun, he endeavored to return to the road. Instead of calling for Matt, he now began whooping it up for Martin. The sun appeared to be in the wrong place, and the road and the spring had vanished. The farther McGlory went, the more confused and bewildered he became. At last he dropped down on a bowlder and panted out his chagrin and disgust.

"Lost! Me, Joseph Easy Mark McGlory, Arizona puncher and boss trailer of the deserts and the foothills! Lost, plumb tangled up in my bearings, clean gone off the jump--and in this two-by-twice range of toy mountains where Rip Van Winkle snoozed for twenty years. I wonder if Rip was as tired as I am when he laid down to snatch his forty winks. Sufferin' tenderfoot! I've walked far enough to carry me plumb to Albany, if it had all been in a straight line. Matt!" and again he lifted his voice. "Martin!"

The lusty yell echoed and reverberated through the surrounding woods, but brought no answer.

Then, suddenly, the cowboy was seized from behind by a pair of stout arms, pulled backward off the bowlder, and flattened out on the ground by a heavy knee on his chest.

It had all happened so quickly that McGlory was dazed. He was a moment or two in recovering his wits and in recognizing the sinister face and mocking eyes that bent down over him.

"Grattan!" he gasped.

"Ay, messmate," gibed a voice from near at hand; "Grattan and Bunce. Don't forget Bunce."

The cowboy turned his head and saw the sailor. The green patch decorated one of the sailor's eyes, but the other eye taunted the luckless prisoner with an exultant gleam.

McGlory struggled desperately under Grattan's hands.

"Stop it!" ordered Grattan.

As McGlory had made no headway with his frantic struggles, he decided to obey the command.

"What are you doing out here in the woods?" inquired Grattan.

"Ease up on that throat a little," wheezed the cowboy. "Want to take the breath all out of me?" The thief's fingers relaxed slightly. "I left the road a spell ago," proceeded McGlory, "and went wide of my bearings somewhere--I don't know just where."

"Lost, eh?" laughed Grattan. "Well, my lad, you've been found."

"How did you happen to find me?"

"How?" jeered Bunce. "You was makin' more noise than a foghorn. The way you was askin' Motor Matt for help, it's a wonder they didn't hear you in Catskill."

"Tie his hands with something, Bunce," said Grattan.

Bunce looked taken aback for a space, then whipped his knife laniard from about his neck, removed the knife, doubled the cord, and contrived a lashing that was strong enough to answer the purpose.

Grattan heaved the cowboy over upon his face and pulled his wrists behind him. In less than a minute the cord was in place, and the prisoner was freed of Grattan's gripping hands and allowed to sit up, his back against the bowlder.

"This meeting," grinned Grattan, "was entirely unexpected, and a pleasant surprise."

"A pleasant surprise for you, I reckon," grunted McGlory. "What did you jump onto me for like this? What good is it going to do you?"

"What benefit I am to derive from this encounter," replied Grattan, "remains to be seen. Tell me, my lad, are you and Motor Matt looking for Tsan Ti?"

An angry denial was on the cowboy's lips, but he thought better of the words before they were spoken.

"Never you mind who we're looking for, Grattan," said he.

"It's for Tsan Ti, I am sure," went on Grattan. "He's somewhere in this section, for he left Gardenville on foot, early this morning, preceded by his man, Sam Wing. I don't know exactly what's up, but I'm rather inclined to think that the mandarin is afraid of me, and is trying to get back to Catskill and place himself under the wing of his estimable protector, Motor Matt. You and Matt heard he was coming and advanced to meet him. The same man who told me the fat Chinaman was in the hills must have given you boys the same information."

"Who was the _hombre_, Grattan?" queried McGlory, secretly delighted to think Grattan's speculations were so wide of the mark.

"A man in a white runabout with a red torpedo beard."

"I wouldn't know a red torpedo beard from a Piute's scalplock, but I do recollect a shuffer in a white car."

This white runabout was one of the cars Matt, Martin, and McGlory had passed on the road, and the driver was one of those of whom they had made inquiries. The inquiries, of course, had been all about the stolen automobile and not about the fat Chinaman. If Grattan had been in the stolen car when asking the man in the white runabout for news of Tsan Ti, then why hadn't the runabout driver remembered the blue car and told Matt something about it?

"Where were you," went on the cowboy, "when you hailed the man in the white car?"

"On foot, by the spring," answered Grattan genially.

He was an educated man and usually good-natured--sometimes under the most adverse circumstances. That was his way, perhaps on the principle that an easy manner is best calculated to disarm suspicion.

"Where was the car you and Bunce stole from the Catskill garage?" asked the cowboy.

"We tucked it away in a pocket of the hills that my friend Pardo knew about," explained Grattan, tacitly admitting the theft and, in his customary fashion, not hesitating to go elaborately into details. "We failed to finish the work that took us to Gardenville last night. When we learned at the railroad station in that town that the fat Chinaman had started south on foot, about break of day, following another of his countrymen, we rushed the car back into an obscure place. It is not advisable, you understand, to make that car too prominent. We shall have to use it by night. Bunce and I rode to the spring on our motor cycles for the purpose of watching the road. The white runabout came along, and the driver told us, he had passed Tsan Ti, walking this way. We waited for him to pass the spring, but he did not. Thinking he had taken to the rough country, Bunce and I returned our wheels to the place where we have pitched temporary camp and began prowling around in the hope of finding the mandarin. Then, quite unexpectedly, I assure you, we heard you calling. We came to this place, guided by the sound of your voice. You know the rest, and----"

Grattan bit off his words abruptly. From a distance came a hail, so far off as to be almost indistinguishable.

"Motor Matt!" exclaimed Grattan, with a laugh. "He's looking for you, McGlory. If this keeps up, we're going to have quite a reunion. Put a hand over his lips, Bunce," he added to the sailor.

McGlory tried to give a desperate yell before the hand closed over his mouth, but he was not quick enough. Grattan, leaning against the bowlder, threw back his head and answered the distant call.

The voice in the woods drew closer and closer.

"Call again, excellent one!" came the weary voice from the scrub. "I heard you shouting some time ago, and you were calling the name of an esteemed friend for whom I am looking. Speak loudly to me, so that I may come where you are."

The three by the bowlder were astounded.

"Tsan Ti," muttered Grattan, "or I don't know the voice. Luck, Bunce! Whoever thought this could happen? The mandarin heard McGlory calling for Motor Matt--and now the mandarin is looking for McGlory and is going to find _us_." A chuckle came with the words. "Lie low, Bunce, and watch McGlory. Leave the trapping of Tsan Ti to me."