“There had to be another three days in bed for the cunning little murderers, after which brother and sister both went out with ’em on horseback, with the same mysterious results—­except that Rex II didn’t get in till next day and looked like he’d come through a feed chopper.  For the next hunt, four days after that, the old lady went, too, all of ’em on horseback; but the same slinking marauder got at the pack before they could come up with it, and two of ’em had to be brought back in arms.  They all stopped here on the way home to tell about the mystery.  Brother and sister was very cheerful and mad about the sport, but their manner was falser than ever.  Mother says the pack is being ruined, and she wouldn’t continue the sport, except it has roused the first gleam of interest her chits has ever showed in anything worth while.  I caught the chits looking at each other in a guilty manner when she says this, and my curiosity wakes up.  I says next time they go out I will be pleased to go with ’em; and the old lady thanks me and says mebbe I can solve this reprehensible mystery.

“In another three days they come by for me.  The beagles was looking an awful lot different from what I had first seen ’em.  They was not only beautifully scarred but they acted kind of timid and reproachful, and their yapping had a note of caution in it that I hadn’t noticed before.  So I got on my pony and went along to help probe the crime.  We worked up the canon trail and over the pass, with the pack staying meekly behind most of the time.  Just the other side of the pass they actually got a rabbit, though not working with their old-time recklessness, I thought.  Of course we had to stop and watch this.  Brother looked the other way and sister just set there biting her lips, with an evil gleam in her pale-blue eyes.  Not a beagle in the pack would have trusted himself alone with her at that minute if he’d known his business.

“Then we rode on down toward Cousin Egbert’s shack, with nothing further happening and the pups staying back in a highly conservative manner.  Brother says that yonder is the Mr. Floud’s place he had spoken of, and ma wants to know if he, too, goes in for ranching, and I says yes, he’s awfully keen about it; so she says we’ll ride over and chat with him and perhaps he can suggest some solution of the mystery in hand.  I said all right, and we ride up.

“Cousin Egbert is tipped back in a chair outside the door, reading a Sunday paper.  Whenever he gets one up here he always reads it clean through, from murders to want ads.  And he’d got into this about as far as the beauty hints and secrets of the toilet.  Well, he was very polite and awkward, and asked us into his dinky little shack; and the old lady says she hears he is quite mad about ranching, and he says, Oh, yes—­only it don’t help matters any to get mad; and he finds a chair for her, and the rest of us set on stools and the bed; and just then she notices that the beagle pack has halted about thirty feet from the door, and some of ’em is milling and acting like they think of starting for home at once.