red into the darkness.

"We're on our way, too," cried Frank, opening the throttle and
pressing down the clutch, as more bullets whistled overhead. "Give 'em
a shot, Jack, and everybody stoop down."

Jack fired off his revolver, shooting high purposely. He wanted merely
to frighten their pursuers into desisting. Then the car gathered
momentum, and was soon out of range. Presently Frank, who had been
driving the flivver as fast as it would go, with the result that they
were all tossed about while the car lurched precariously over the
rutted road, slowed down to a more moderate pace.

"Anybody hurt?" he called. "They never touched me."

"Not a scratch," answered Mr. Temple.

"Same here," cried Bob and Jack together.

"Say, though," cried Frank, suddenly realizing Remedios no longer
sprawled on the hood, "we've lost our passenger."

"Good riddance," said Bob.

"Must've thrown him off when we struck the other car," decided Jack.

"Or else he jumped off when his chance came," surmised Mr. Temple.

To a query from Frank as to the route to be followed and the distance
to camp, Jack made answer that the road lay straight ahead with no
laterals cutting into it, and that camp was only a couple of miles
beyond.

"Say, Jack," declared Bob with a laugh, "that was some reception
committee you got out to meet us."

"Yes," kidded Frank, "what were you aiming to do, anyway? Put on a
Wild West thriller for a bunch of tenderfeet fresh from New York?"

Jack laughed. "Tenderfeet, your grandmother," he said. "It looked to
me as if the effete Easterners put on the thriller for the bandits."

Relieved at the safe outcome of their adventure, everybody joined in
the laugh, and for several minutes the high good humor manifested
itself in jokes bandied back and forth. Then a 'dobe ranch house
loomed ahead, low-lying, of four or five rooms, a wide, dirt-floored
porch along its length, upon which the rooms gave through separate
doors. At the rear were a clump of shadowy outbuildings and a corral.
To one side and some distance away stood a low frame building and a
high, latticed tower with antennae, which the chums recognized with a
shout of delight.

"There's the radiophone station, hey, Jack?"

Frank drew the car to the porch, and Gabby Pete, at the sound of its
approach, opened the door of the kitchen and emerged, big spoon in
hand, the lamplight streaming from the room behind him, and savory
odors floating out to the hungry bo