here's where I'm givin' you a chance to pay dividends on them four
bits."

Bat grinned: "You go 'head an' mak' you play. You fin' out I ain't
forgit dat four bit. She ain' mooch money--four bit ain'. But w'en
she all you got, she wan hell of a lot . . . _bien_!"




CHAPTER XVII

IN THE BAD LANDS

It was well toward noon on the following day when the four finally
succeeded in locating the grub cache of the departed horse-thief. Nearly
two years had passed since the man had described the place to Tex and a
two-year-old description of a certain small, carefully concealed cavern
in a rock-wall pitted with innumerable similar caverns is a mighty
slender peg to hang hopes upon.

"It's like searching for buried treasure!" exclaimed Alice as she pried
and prodded among the rocks with a stout stick.

"There won't be much treasure, even if we find the _cache_," smiled Tex.
"Horse thievin' had got onpopular to the extent there wasn't hardly a
livin' in it long before this specimen took it up as a profession. We'll
be lucky if we find any grub in it."

A few moments later Bat unearthed the _cache_ and, as the others crowded