Chapter XI: The Paper Trail

The coils hummed merrily to the six-cylinder accompaniment. The wind whistled and sang in the ears of the three who were plunging along at a speed which was bound to get them somewhere in short order.

Then, as might be expected, something happened. It was no accident to the car. The road spread apart in two equally well-traveled branches, and Matt shut off and came to a stop at the forks.

"The canvasman, of course," said the young motorist, looking around at Burton, "couldn't tell you which fork the monkey wagon would take."

"Here's a go!" muttered Burton. "If we take one fork, we may be hustling off on the wrong scent. At a guess, I should say take the right-hand branch."

"Let's not do any guessing until we have to," Matt returned. "My cowboy chum here is a good hand at picking up trails. Show us how they do it in Arizona, Joe."

McGlory was out of the car in a flash and giving his attention to the surface of the road.

"You might as well try to hunt for the print of a rabbit's foot in the trail of a herd of stampeded steers," said McGlory, after five precious minutes spent in fruitless examination.

"What sort of a cowboy are you, anyhow?" scoffed Burton.

"Well, look," answered McGlory. "The ground is all cut up with people coming to the show, and it's none too soft. I couldn't pick out the tread of a traction thrashing machine in all this jumble of prints."

"Any one coming on either road?" queried Burton, standing up and looking. "If there is, we could inquire as to whether they'd passed the monkey wagon."

"See any one?" asked Matt.

"Not a soul," and the showman plumped disappointedly down in his seat.

"Just a minute, Joe," interposed Matt, as the cowboy was about to climb back into the tonneau. "What's that white object in the road?" Matt pointed as he spoke. "There's one, just over the left-hand fork, and another beyond it."

"If you stop to bother with paper scraps," cried Burton, "we'll never get anywhere."

McGlory, however, turned back and picked up the object to which Matt had called his attention.

It was a scrap of paper, just as Burton had said. The scrap was a ragged square, as though it had been roughly torn, and measured about two inches across.

The cowboy examined it casually at first, then his face changed, and he gave it closer attention.

"My handwriting," he declared, looking up at Matt.

"How can that be?" scoffed Burton.

"I don't know how it can be," replied McGlory, "but it's a fact, all the same. I had a memorandum book, and have jotted down various things in it."

"Where'd you leave the memorandum book?" jested the showman impatiently; "in the monkey wagon?"

"Nary, I didn't. I left it in the hip pocket of my working clothes."

"And Carl had on the clothes!" exclaimed Matt, with a jubilant ring in his voice. "Carl must have scattered that trail for our benefit."

He stood up in the automobile and looked back over the road they had traveled.

"Why," he went on, "we haven't been as observing as we should have been. There's a paper trail, and Carl must have started it pretty soon after the monkey wagon left the show grounds."

"Well, well!" muttered Burton. "Say, Matt, that Dutch chum of yours is quite a lad, after all. The idea of his thinking of that."

"Carl always has his head with him," declared Matt. "Climb in, Joe. The left fork for ours."

McGlory pulled the crank, before he got in, for the stop had killed the engine.

"It's a cinch," said McGlory, as he resumed his place in the tonneau, "that Carl wasn't hypnotized when he dropped those scraps. How _could_ he drop 'em? That's what beats me. Why, he was locked in, so Ping said."

"There was a hole in the floor," explained Burton. "Not a very big one, but big enough for an ant-eater to get a foot through. I was going to repair the cage, but haven't had time to attend to it."

"Why didn't Carl yell again?" went on McGlory. "If he had yelled long enough, and loud enough, some one would have been bound to hear him and stop Ben Ali."

"This is another case where Carl's using his head," put in Matt. "He's playing some dodge or other."

"He's showing up a whole lot stronger than I ever imagined he could," said the cowboy. "I had sized him up for a two-spot at any sort of headwork. Got my opinion, I reckon, from the way those Chicago detectives fooled him."

"He's not so slow as you imagine, Joe," said Matt. "Now keep an eye out for scraps!"

"We can't get into a scrap with those Hindoos any too quick to suit me," laughed McGlory, hanging out over the side of the motor car.

Once more the whirling, headlong rush of the car was resumed. No sooner had Burton, or McGlory, discovered a bit of white in the roadway ahead than it was lost to sight behind.

Then, after four or five miles of this, the three in the car raised an object, drawn up at the roadside, which brought the car to a halt. The object was the monkey wagon, horse gone from the shafts, rear door swinging open, and not a soul in the vicinity.

"Here's another queer twist," grumbled Burton, as all three got out to make a close survey of the wagon. "What do you think of it, Matt?"

Matt and McGlory thrust their heads in at the door.

"Phew!" gurgled the cowboy, drawing back. "There's a mineral well, in Lafayette, that's a dead ringer for the smell inside that cage wagon."

"I haven't had it swabbed out yet," apologized Burton.

"Here's the hole where Carl dropped out the paper scraps," Matt called, from inside the wagon.

"And here's something else, pard!" yelled McGlory.

Matt came out of the wagon and found his cowboy chum calling Burton's attention to marks in the road.

"What do you make of it, Joe?" asked Matt, coming closer.

"Well," answered McGlory, reading the "signs," "a one-horse buggy with rubber tires stopped here, alongside the monkey wagon. Look how the road's tramped up, ahead there. The horse was restive during the halt, and did some pawing."

"Great guns!" murmured Burton. "My runabout!"

"I think it's pretty clear now," observed Matt. "Aurung Zeeb and Haidee didn't get away at the same time Ben Ali and Carl did, or else they took a different course. Anyhow, they came up with the wagon. The runabout's faster, so the whole party went on with it."

"They might get three people into the runabout, by crowding," said Burton, "but they never could get four people into it."

"That's why the horse was taken from the monkey wagon," went on Matt. "Aurung Zeeb or Ben Ali must have ridden the animal."

"By Jove, King, I wish I had your head for getting at things! That was the way of it--it _must_ have been the way of it. Let's pile back into the machine and hustle on."

They all felt that the chase was drawing to a close. The runabout was a faster vehicle than the monkey wagon, but there was not the ghost of a show for the Kentucky horse getting away from the automobile.

From that point on, the paper trail was not in evidence.

"Carl wasn't able to drop any more scraps," said Matt. "When he was inside the monkey wagon he was out of sight and could do about as he pleased; crowded into the runabout with Ben Ali and Haidee, and with Aurung Zeeb riding behind, he couldn't possibly drop a clue to guide us."

"The Dutchman seems to have taken it for granted that he'd be followed," hazarded Burton.

"He knows very well," returned Matt, "that I wouldn't stand around and let him worry through this run of hard luck alone. Look out for the runabout. The way I figure it, the rig can't be more than ten or fifteen minutes ahead of us."

"How do you figure it, Matt?" asked Burton.

"Well, from the time Joe and I heard Carl call for help. I don't believe it was more than half an hour from that time until we were hitting the high places with this automobile. Eh, Joe?"

"No more than that, pard," answered McGlory.

"I should think we'd have gained more than fifteen or twenty minutes on the Hindoos, the rate we've been coming," remarked Burton.

"Possibly we have. If that's so, then the runabout can't be even ten minutes ahead of us. Now----"

"Runabout!" yelled McGlory.

He was standing up in the tonneau and peering ahead. The road, at this point, was bordered with heavy timber on both sides, but in half a minute Matt and Burton could each see the vehicle to which the cowboy had called their attention.

It wasn't a runabout, as it proved, but a two-seated "democrat" wagon, drawn by a team, and conveying another party townward--presumably for the evening performance of the Big Consolidated.

McGlory's disappointment was keen. And his feelings, for that matter, were matched by those of Motor Matt and Burton.

Matt halted the automobile and, when the wagon came alongside, asked the driver if he had been passed by a runabout farther along the road.

The party had come five miles on that road and, according to the driver, hadn't been passed by anything on wheels going the other way.

For a space those in the automobile were in a quandary.

"What's amiss?" fumed Burton. "Are we on the wrong track, after all, in spite of your Dutch friend and his paper trail, and McGlory's reading the signs at the monkey wagon?"

Matt suddenly threw in the reverse and began to turn.

"Only one thing could have happened," he averred.

"What's that?"

"Why, the people in the runabout must have heard us coming and turned from the road into the woods."

"Let her out on the back track, then!" cried Burton. "If the Hindoos think they've dodged us, they've probably pulled out into the road and started the other way."

This seemed to have been the case, for three minutes speeding over the return trail brought those in the automobile in sight of the runabout.

This time it _was_ the runabout, and no mistake, and the Kentucky cob was stretching out like a race horse under the frantic plying of a whip.

Burton reached behind him, under his coat, and brought a revolver into view.

"We'll find out about this business before we're many minutes older!" he exclaimed grimly.