CHAPTER VIII WHAT WAS MISSING

“Gone!”

This was the one word which burst from Dave’s lips as he searched one pocket after another in rapid succession. Then he arose to his feet, to hurry up and down the trail in the vicinity where the encounter with Jasniff had occurred. But though he looked everywhere, not a trace of the documents, the letters, or his pocketbook could be found.

An examination showed that his coat was torn in several places and that the side of one of the pockets had likewise been rent. But whether this damage had been caused by the fight or when he had rolled down over the rocks, he could not determine.

“I guess I got pretty well mussed up in the fight, and the fall down the rocks finished the job,” he muttered to himself.

He was much disheartened, and felt bitter against Nick Jasniff. Whether the rascal had picked up the articles lost and made off with them was, however, a question.

78“If I lost them up here on the trail he probably took them,” Dave reasoned. “But if they fell out of my pockets when I rolled down the rocks and over the cliff, they must be scattered somewhere between here and the place where I landed in the bushes.”

Dave felt much perplexed, not knowing whether it would be better to try to find Jasniff or to make a search in the vicinity where he had had the fall.

“I suppose it would be sheer nonsense to try to follow Jasniff on foot if he went off on my horse,” the young civil engineer reasoned. “I might as well take a look down below and make sure that I didn’t drop those things when I fell.”

With his hurt shoulder and lame ankle, it was almost as much of a task to get down the rocks as it had been to climb up. As well as he was able, he took the same course he had followed in the fall, and he kept his eyes wide open for the things he had lost. But five minutes of slipping and sliding brought him to the top of the little cliff without seeing anything but dirt, rocks, and bushes. Then he had to make a wide detour to get to the bottom of the cliff.

“I suppose it’s a wild-goose chase, and I’ll have my work for my pains,” he grumbled. “Oh, rats! Why did I have to fall in with Jasniff on this trip? I wish that fellow was at the North 79Pole or down among the Hottentots, or somewhere where he couldn’t bother me!”

Dave began to search around in the vicinity of the spot where he had fallen. He was almost ready to give up in despair when his eye caught sight of a white-looking object some distance below. Eagerly he climbed down to the place where the object lay, and the next moment set up a cry of joy.

“Hurrah! Here are Mr. Obray’s documents!” he exclaimed. “I hope they are all right.”

A hasty inspection convinced him that the legal-looking envelope and its contents were intact. Having inspected them carefully, he placed the packet inside of his shirt.

“I won’t take any more chances with it,” he told himself. “Somebody will have to rip my clothing off to get that envelope away.”

With the envelope safe in his possession once more, Dave felt exceedingly light-hearted. But the letter from Jessie, as well as the communication from Uncle Dunston, and the pocketbook with the forty odd dollars in it, were still missing, and he spent some time looking for those things.

“It doesn’t matter so much about the letters, even though I hate to part with the one from Jessie,” he reasoned. “But I’d like to set my eyes 80on that pocketbook with the forty-two or forty-three dollars it held.”

But our hero’s success had come to an end with the finding of the envelope to be delivered at Orella; and although he searched around for a quarter of an hour longer, nothing of any value came to sight. Then, with a deep sigh, he pulled himself up once more to the trail, and set off on a hunt for his horse.

“Jasniff was headed in the opposite direction, and maybe he didn’t go after Sport,” Dave argued to himself. “Anyhow, I’ve got to go that way, even if I have to journey on foot.”

Painfully our hero limped along, for the climbing up and down on the rocks had done the lame ankle no good. He had had to loosen his shoe, for the ankle had swollen not a little.

“If I could only bathe it it wouldn’t be so bad,” he thought.

But there was no water at hand, and the small quantity he carried in a flask for drinking purposes was too precious to be used on the injured limb.

He had covered several yards when his lame ankle gave him such a twinge that he had to sit down to give it a rest.

“I don’t know what I’m going to do if I can’t find that horse,” he thought bitterly.

He was sitting and nursing the hurt ankle and looking over the landscape in the valley below him, 81when something on one of the bushes less than fifty feet away caught his eye.

“I wonder what that can be,” he mused. “It doesn’t look like a bird’s nest. It looks more like an old shoe. I wonder——Can it be my pocketbook?”

The last thought was so electrifying that Dave leaped to his feet, and, regardless of the painful ankle, walked over to the edge of the trail. Here he could see the object quite plainly, and he lost no time in crawling down to the bushes and obtaining it.

It was indeed his pocketbook, but wide open and empty. Even the few cards and slips of paper it had contained were missing.

“This proves one thing,” he reasoned bitterly. “Jasniff picked that pocketbook up where we had the fight, and he came this way while he was emptying it, then he threw it away.”

Dave was also sure of another thing. The pocketbook and the two letters had been in the same pocket, and he felt certain that Nick Jasniff had also confiscated the two communications.

“Now the question is, if he came this way, did he get Sport?” Dave mused. “If he did, then it’s good-bye to the letters, the money and the horse.”

Placing the empty wallet in his pocket, Dave sat down and rested his lame ankle. He counted the 82loose change in his trousers’ pocket and found he had eighty-five cents. Then he limped on once more around another bend in the trail.

Here a sight filled him with satisfaction. At this point the rocks came to an end and there was a fairly good bit of pasture-land, and here stood Sport, feeding away as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened.

“Good old Sport!” cried Dave, going up to the animal and patting him affectionately. “I’m mighty glad you didn’t run any farther, and doubly glad Nick Jasniff didn’t get you. Now, old boy, we’ll be on our way and try to make up for lost time;” and in a moment more our hero was in the saddle and galloping off in the direction of Orella.

Dave surmised that Nick Jasniff had come in that direction looking for the horse, but without finding Sport. At the same time, the rascal had rifled the pocketbook and then thrown it in the bushes. Then, thinking the horse had gone a much greater distance, Jasniff had retraced his steps and continued on his way in the direction of the construction camp.

“But he can’t be bound for the camp, for Mr. Obray warned him to keep away,” thought our hero. “It must be that he is headed either for some of the mining camps or ranches, or the railroad station.”

Our hero felt that it would be next to useless 83for him to go to the Double Eight Ranch, where Nick Jasniff was employed, and accuse him of the theft. The fellow would probably deny everything—even the meeting on the road. And as there had been no witnesses to the transaction, there the case would have to rest.

“Just the same, when I get the chance, I’ll let the manager of the Double Eight Ranch know what sort of fellow Jasniff is,” Dave said to himself. “Maybe that crowd over there won’t want a prison bird around any more than we wanted him at the construction camp.”

Our hero had been right in regard to finding the pocketbook and letters. After Dave had disappeared over the edge of the cliff below the trail, Nick Jasniff had looked around to find his hat, which had fallen off in the struggle. As he picked this up he had noticed the pocketbook and the two letters.

“Maybe there’s something in that pocketbook worth keeping,” he had muttered to himself, as he tried to stop the flow of blood from his bruised nose. “And I guess I’m entitled to anything I can get from Dave Porter. I hope he broke every bone in his body by that fall.”

He waited for a minute to see if Dave would reappear, and then hurried along the trail, thinking he could find and mount our hero’s horse. He quickly transferred the forty-three dollars he 84found in the wallet to his own pocket, and then threw the pocketbook away in the spot where Dave picked it up.

“I guess it’s no use to look any farther,” Jasniff had muttered to himself on failing to locate the horse. “Gee! I’m glad I struck this forty-three dollars! That amount with the thirty I had before will see me a long distance on my way.”

And thereupon he had hurried back past the spot where the encounter had taken place, and then along the trail to where there was a fork—one branch leading down to the construction camp, and the other off in the direction of some mines and the nearest railroad station.

Although our hero did not know it, Jasniff had had another quarrel earlier in the day. A miner operating near the Double Eight Ranch had the night before fallen in with several of the men employed by the Mentor Construction Company, and from them had learned the particulars concerning the fellow who had gotten out of prison.

This news had been carried to James Dackley, the manager of the Double Eight, and Dackley, who was naturally a hot-headed man, had become furious over the thought of being so deceived by Jasniff.

“I only took him on because I thought he was a tenderfoot and was hard up for a job,” Dackley had growled. “He told such a straight story that 85I swallowed it, hook, line, and sinker. I don’t want such a fellow around here any more than they want him over to the railroad camp. Just have Nolan send him to me, and I’ll soon send him about his business.”

Thereupon Nick Jasniff had been summoned from the bunk-house to the main building on the Double Eight Ranch and been closely questioned by James Dackley. He had denied everything, but the ranch manager had refused almost to listen to him.

“I’m going to investigate this,” said Dackley, “and if the story is true, the sooner you get out the better I’ll be pleased.”

Nick Jasniff had well understood that the truth would come out in the near future; and knowing how passionate James Dackley could become on occasion, he had lost no time in packing his few belongings and asking for his pay. This had been given to him, and he had thereupon set out on his journey toward the railroad station on foot—Dackley refusing to give him the loan of a horse.

Nick Jasniff had come to the conclusion that it would be best for him to quit the neighborhood. He had thirty dollars in his pocket, and this added to the forty-three taken from Dave’s pocketbook made quite a sum.

“There’s no use of my staying here in the West,” he reasoned. “There are far more 86chances in the East for a fellow like me. Maybe I’ll find some of the fellows I used to know out there, and we can pull off some stunts worth while.”

With several miles placed between him and the place where he had had the encounter with Dave, Nick Jasniff sat down to rest and at the same time look over the letters he had picked up. There was a cynical sneer on his face as he read the communication from Jessie to Dave.

“It’s enough to make a fellow sick to think such a rich girl as that should take to a fellow like Dave Porter,” he murmured to himself. “Wouldn’t I like to put a spoke in that fellow’s wheel! I wonder if I couldn’t do something to come between Porter and the Wadsworths? I owe old man Wadsworth something for sending me to prison.”

Then Nick Jasniff turned to the letter written by Dunston Porter. The beginning of this did not interest him greatly, but he read with interest what Dave’s uncle had written concerning the gypsies who had camped out on the outskirts of Crumville.

“Got into a row with a couple of gypsies, eh?” he mused. “I reckon that’s something worth remembering. Maybe those fellows wouldn’t mind joining me in some kind of a game against the Wadsworths. Maybe we could put one over and 87make a lot of money out of it. Anyway, it’s something worth thinking about;” and thereupon Nick Jasniff grew very thoughtful as he proceeded on his way to the railroad station.