old tornado a-comin'. You folks had passed me and 'scaped my
attention.

"Me and the roan just squatted down under a bank till the wind was
over; then we made tracks for the ranch house ahead of the rain.
Get soaked? Well, I should say! But somehow I didn't care to stay
around where that blame black Satan disappeared hisself so
strange-like. No, sir."

"Tom, I think you have been stringing the long bow," declared
Rhoda, shaking her head.

"Honest to pickles!" reiterated the cowboy. "Why--why, I'll show
you the very hole in the hill where it happened."

They laughed at that; but the Eastern girls and Walter were
inclined to believe that the cowboy had told the truth--as far as
he knew it. In some way the outlaw had managed to elude him.

"Goodness!" murmured Walter to Nan, "wouldn't it be great to catch
that black horse?"

"He's handsomer than your Prince," agreed Nan.

"He is that. I wonder where he went when Tom lost him?"

The treasure-hunting party did not go directly to the gulch in
which the girls had had their adventure at the time of the tornado.
A part of what Hesitation Kane had on his pack horse was to be
delivered to an outfit herding a bunch of steers back in the hills