I know you’re up to some tricks, an’ that Tim is at the bottom of it. I want you all to be around when I lick him.”

This sally brought forth loud laughter from all the listeners except Tim. He looked dubious and astounded.

“We’ll shore be there, Cal,” said Wess.

Without further comment Cal cranked the Ford, finding, to his secret amaze, that the engine again started with unusual alacrity, and then he climbed to the driver’s seat. As he drove off toward the post office he expected much jest and laughter to be flung after him. In this, however, he was mistaken. Something was wrong with the car, surely. It ran too easily and smoothly, and it gave Cal the impression that it wanted to race. All at once he conceived an absolute conviction that the boys had tampered with it in some uncanny way. He drove to the post office and turned round, and stopped beyond the door near the porch. A number of natives were sitting on a bench, smoking pipes and whittling sticks, awaiting the one event of Ryson’s day—the arrival of the stage. On the edge of the porch sat Tuck Merry, beside his canvas roll of baggage.

At that moment, as Cal was about to get out he espied three horsemen trotting down the road from the east. He peered at them, and recognized Bloom of the Bar XX outfit, and two of his riders, one of them surely being Hatfield.

“Well, I’ll be darned!” ejaculated Cal. “Talk about your hard luck!”

To be made the victim of tricks by his own relatives and friends was bad enough, but to have to endure them in the face of this Bar XX outfit, especially Hatfield, was infinitely worse. Could Wess and his partners have had anything to do with the strange coincidence of the arrival of Bloom and Hatfield?

“Aw, they couldn’t be that mean,” muttered Cal, loyally. Fun was fun, and the boys evidently had something especially to their liking, but they never would have sent for enemies of the Thurmans. Cal had no further thought of such a thing. The advent of these riders was just an unfortunate coincidence calculated to add to Cal’s discomfiture.

He watched them ride past the garage, past Wess and his comrades, who nodded casually to them, and down the road to the hitching rail under the cottonwood tree near the post office. They dismounted. Bloom and Hatfield approached, while the third rider, a stranger to Cal, began to untie a mail sack from the back of his saddle. Bloom was a heavy man for a rider, being square-shouldered and stocky, with a considerable girth. His huge bat-wing chaps flapped like sails as he slouched forward. He had a hard face, and though it showed him under forty, it was a record of strenuous life. Hatfield was young, a handsome, stalwart figure. He swaggered as he walked. His garb was picturesque, consisting of a huge beaver sombrero, red scarf, blue flannel shirt, just now covered with dust, and fringed chaps ornamented in silver.

“Howdy, Thurman,” greeted Bloom as he came up. “Met yore dad this mornin’, an’ he was tellin’ me you’d come to town.”

“How do, Bloom,” returned Cal, rather shortly.

Hatfield did not speak to Cal, though he gave him a sidelong look out of his sharp, bold eyes. Then, as before, it struck Cal why Hatfield had gained the favor of most of the girls of the Tonto. But he was not equally popular with the men. Hatfield had few superiors as a rider and roper, and he was a bad customer in a fight, as Cal remembered to his grief; but though these qualities had entitled him to a certain respect, he had never been a friend of any of the Thurmans. Moreover, he did not come of Texas stock and he belonged to the Bar XX outfit.

These two riders passed Cal, and had mounted the porch before they espied the ludicrous figure of Tuck Merry lounging with his back against a post.