Chapter IX: Tricked Once More

Matt and McGlory were bruised and sore. They were also pretty tired. From the moment they had met Tsan Ti on the mountainside that morning, they had been knocked about from pillar to post.

"If trouble will please hold off for a couple of hours," said McGlory, "I'll give a good imitation of a fellow snatching his forty winks and getting ready for another round. What do you say, Matt? The mandarin isn't here. He may come, but I wouldn't bet on it, as I'm sort of losing faith in the yellow boy with the red button. He has a disagreeable habit of getting out from under whenever anything goes wrong, and we find ourselves stalled. I reckon, though, you'll want to stay here and give him a chance to blow in?"

"We can hold on here for two or three hours," answered Matt, "take a bath, and a rub down, and a bit of a rest, then fasten our clothes together with a supply of safety pins and motor back to Catskill and get another outfit of clothes from our grips. Then, after a good night's sleep, we'll go to Purling."

"No matter whether the mandarin shows up or not?"

"No matter what the mandarin does, Joe. I've worked up a big interest in that Eye of Buddha, and I'm going to find out whether it's a fair shake or a myth."

"I'll bet all my share of the aëroplane money against two bits that we never see the old hatchet boy again, and also that something hits us before we can get back to Catskill."

"You're guessing, Joe."

"Well, that's my chirp, in anything from doughnuts to double eagles. That Jackson party might as well hang that wrecked bubble in a tree as a memento--the man with the rice fields and the tea plantations, and so on, has started for the high timber just to dodge paying for that pile of scrap down the trail."

"You're wrong," said Matt confidently.

"Wait till the cards are all on the table, pard, and then we'll see."

They had a most refreshing bath and a long rest in a couple of lazy-back chairs on an upper veranda. Orders had been left with the clerk that word should be brought to them at once if Tsan Ti put in an appearance.

McGlory awoke from a drowse to unbosom himself of a subject which had not, as yet, claimed its proper share of attention.

"The fellow who came up the mountain and told Jackson there was a burning car piled by the roadside," said he, "said there were two Chinamen watching the conflagration. Think chink number two was Kien Lung with another yellow cord, Matt?"

"No."

"Then who was he?"

"I've been thinking that it was Sam Wing, the San Francisco Chinaman, who has been keeping track of the two thieves for the mandarin."

"That's you!" exclaimed McGlory. "Why, I never thought of that dark horse. Have you any notion he coaxed the mandarin away on important business?"

"That's likely."

"Anything's likely. For instance, it's quite likely the fat Chinaman is a washee-washee boy from 'Frisco with a fine, large imagination, and that he's stringing us."

"Why should he want to do that?"

"No _sabe_, but there's a lot of things we can't _sabe_ concerning this layout."

"Tsan Ti has money----"

"He showed us all of a hundred in double eagles. But did he let us get our hands on the coin? Not any. He allows, in his large and offhand way, that he has millions of taels--but that may be one of his tales," and McGlory grinned.

"Anyhow," said Matt doggedly, "we ride to Purling to-morrow and see the man at the general store."

Matt fell into a drowse again. No one from the office came to announce the arrival of Tsan Ti, and when the hour arrived for the evening meal the boys had their supper sent to their room. They were not arrayed properly for "dining out."

Following the meal they patched up their garments with safety pins, settled their bill, and walked over to the Mountain House garage. Dusk was falling as they trundled their machines into the road and lighted their lamps.

"We'll have an easier time of it going down the mountain," said Matt, "than we had coming up."

"Don't be so sure, pard," answered McGlory. "There are a number of things to trouble us besides the road."

"Don't cross any trouble bridges until you come to them, Joe," advised Matt.

The motor boys were feeling a little stiff and sore, but their engines were humming cheerfully, and there was a joy for them in the downward spin through the woods.

They remembered the tree root, and slowed down for it as it came under their headlights; and they also remembered the location of the wrecked automobile and gave it a wide berth.

At about the place where they had encountered the one-eyed sailor, with everything going smoothly and a fair prospect of reaching Catskill in record time, the crack of a firearm suddenly split the still air to the left of the road. Startled, they clamped on the brakes and came to a halt in time to hear a shrill cry of "Help! help!" ringing out weirdly from the dark woods.

"Sufferin' hold-ups!" murmured McGlory. "And here we are with nothing more than a couple of jack-knives to our names."

"What do you suppose it can be?" asked Matt, dropping the bracket from his rear wheel and letting the motor cycle stand in the road.

He moved off toward the left and listened.

"There's a row on in there," declared McGlory. "I can hear some one pounding around in the timber."

"So can I," said Matt. "We've got to do what we can, Joe. That may mean robbery--or worse. Come on!"

The generous instincts of the motor boys prompted them to go at once to the assistance of a possible victim, and they hurried into the timber. The sounds of scuffling which they had heard died out suddenly, and while they were moving around through the gloom, trying to locate the scene of the trouble, there reached their ears the chug-chugging of motors getting under way.

"Our motor cycles!" exclaimed Matt, darting back toward the road.

"Gad-hook it all!" cried McGlory; "it was a frame-up! A trick to run off our wheels!"

Although they were only a few moments regaining the road, the lamps of the two motor cycles were gleaming more than a hundred feet away.

"Stop!" yelled Matt, racing down the road.

His answer was a raucous laugh--such a laugh as they had heard before. And then came the words, bellowed hoarsely:

"Leave the Eye o' Buddha alone!"

After that silence, during which the gleaming lamps turned an angle in the road and were blotted from sight.

"Seems to me," said McGlory grimly, "I've heard that voice before."

Motor Matt did not reply at once. Perhaps his feelings were too deep for words.

"And I was expecting something, too!" said the cowboy, in a spasm of self-reproach. "Sufferin' easy marks! Matt, some of the stuff from those glass balls must still be playing hob with our brains. Otherwise, how is it these backsets keep happening in one, two, three order? There go a pair of motor bikes that'll stand us in four hundred good big cart wheels. That was right, what you said before we left those wheels and flocked into the timber. That shot and those sounds of a scuffle _did_ mean robbery. That's a lesson for us never to help a person in distress. Likewise it's a hint that we'd better pull out and leave the mandarin to manage his own troubles."

"It's a hint that we'd better go to Purling to-morrow and look for Grattan," and there was an unwonted sharpness in Motor Matt's voice that caused McGlory to straighten up and take notice.

"When you tune up that way," said the cowboy, "it means mischief. There was another man with the Hottentot. Do you think the _hombre_ was this Grattan sharp?"

"No. Grattan is expecting the sailor at Purling to-morrow. This was some one else."

"The ruby thieves have quite an extensive gang. It's walk for us, from here to Catskill."

"From here to the first farmhouse," corrected Matt. "We'll get some one to take us to Catskill with a horse and buggy."

He bit off his words crisp and sharp, which, to McGlory, proved how deeply he resented the scurvy trick by which they had been lured away from the motor cycles.

"How easy it is to understand things when you look back at' em," philosophized the cowboy, swinging along at Matt's side, down the dark road. "The webfoot and his pal fired that shot and raised a yell for help, then they jumped up and down in the bushes, and the result had all the effect of a knock-down and drag-out. One-Eye must have had us spotted, and he and his pal were lingering in the trailside brush, watching for our headlights. Oh, yes, it was easy. The 'illustrious ones' tumbled over themselves to fall into the trap. If I had that----"

"There's a farmhouse," said Matt, and indicated a point of light close to the foot of the mountain. "Nearly every house in these parts is either a boarding house or a hotel. We can get a rig, all right, I'm pretty sure."