“One feller wuz talkin’ pritty loud, ez if he’d been hittin’ up ther tangle juice, an’ ther other feller wuz tryin’ ter make him put on ther soft pedal, what Clay calls talkin’ pianissimo.  But when the booze is in ther wit is out, an’ ther feller would shut it down some fer a while, then he’d get a good lungful o’ air an’ bust out ergin.”

“What was it all about?”

“Erbout runnin’ us off’n ther reservation.”

“They’d have a fine chance to do that,” said Ted, laughing.

“It seems they hev some sort o’ a club, ther ‘Flyin’ somethin’ er other’—­I couldn’t jest catch what.  To hear them fellers talk they’re holy terrors.”

“How do they propose to run us off?  Did you hear that?”

“No; they didn’t discuss ways an’ means, but they said as how ther boss, they mentioned his name, but it’s clear got erway from me, hed riz up on his hind legs an’ hed give it out straight to ther gang thet ez long ez we wuz in ther country they couldn’t do no good fer theirselfs, consequentially we must skidoo, ez they needed this part o’ ther country fer their own elbowroom.  They wuz real sassy erbout it, too.”

“I suppose they thought all they had to do was to serve notice on us, and we’d vacate.”

“I reckon thet’s ther way they hed it chalked up.”

“Well, that bears out what Billy Sudden told me to-night after we were shot at.”

Then Ted related what Billy had told him about Skip Riley and his influence on the boys of Soldier Butte and Strongburg.

“Thet thar’s ther very feller they wuz talkin’ erbout, thet Skip Riley.  Now I recolict it, an’ ther name o’ their sweet-scented aggergation is ther ‘Flyin’ Demons.’”

“Oh, mercy!  Aren’t they just awful?” said Ben, with a grin.  “But which way are they expected to fly, toward you or from you?”

“If they come monkeyin’ eround these broad acres they’ll be flyin’ fer home,” said Bud.

“Or to jail, if we can prove what I believe against them,” said Ted thoughtfully.

“What is that?” asked Kit.

“You haven’t forgotten the mysterious robbery of the Strongburg Trust Company’s office, have you?”

“Nope.”

“You remember that a great many people to this day disbelieve that the office was robbed at all, because everything was found locked and barred, and the most careful examination showed that no one could have broken into the room from which a box containing twenty thousand dollars in currency and a package of negotiable bonds was stolen.”

“Shore, I remember.  That’s allays been ther greatest mystery in these parts.”

“You haven’t forgotten the robbery soon afterward of the Soldier Butte post office and the disappearance of the registered mail pouch that came in on the train at two o’clock in the morning.  It was thrown into the inner office by the carrier, and the office securely locked.  Yet in the morning it could not be found, and there was nothing to show that the post office had been entered.”