"Perhaps, now, my Uncle Job won't be tickled half to death to get hold of this telltale message!" he gurgled. "If only he can find who wrote the same, it'll turn out to be his Waterloo, believe me, if half I've heard about Uncle Job is true." "And that ought to be easy," remarked Jack. "You mean, he could tell from the handwriting?" Harry demanded. "Yes, but there would be a better way than that," the other scout continued, as he gave Ned a knowing nod. "'Tis the pigeon, you must mean!" exclaimed Jimmy. "That's it," Jack acknowledged, "and surely a fellow couldn't keep birds like that and set one flying every once in so often, without others knowing about it. Find the puncher who's got the homing pigeon fancy and you'll have the leader of the spies at the Double Cross, if that's where the bird started from." The scout master nodded his head approvingly. "That was well figured out, Jack," he said, "and did your scout logic credit. A scout has got to keep his wits sharpened and not let anything slip past him, no matter how small it may seem. Of course, the owner of the pigeon must be guilty; and, just as you say, it wouldn't be easy for him to carry on with his birds unless most of the other punchers knew about it." "But the message?" Jimmy objected. "Oh! they didn't see this one, but another that the fellow would be smart enough to get up, and _pretend_ to fasten to the leg of the air traveler," Jack went on to say, in a way that showed how his mind had grasped the subject. Ned carefully folded the tissue paper and put it safely away in his pocketbook. "That was the luckiest shot you ever made, I take it, Jimmy," he remarked, turning to the freckled-faced chum, who immediately puffed his chest out in a ridiculous fashion and began to pretend to take on airs. "Oh! the rest of you can do some stunts once in a coon's age," he told them, "but when it comes right down to taking the cake, you have to apply to your Uncle Jimmy. I managed to land there with both feet. Luck and me, we're bedfellers, you see. But then, far from me 'twould be to boast. It was a fair shot, Ned, I admit it. And the McGraw luck held good." "You'll have to let me in on a little of that, Jimmy," Jack told him, "because you happened to be using my shoulder at the time, remember. Only for that, chances are you'd have lost the hawk and we'd never have known that it was a homer he had caught for his lunch. "Shake on that, Jack; you're in," Jimmy was quick to say. "But we'd better be going on, hadn't we?" Harry asked. "Because I'm more anxious now than ever to pull up at the ranch house." "Yes," Ned informed them, "we've got a long walk ahead of us yet. I'll do up the pigeon and the hawk to show your uncle, on the quiet, when there's no one else around. You see, he's apt to think we may be yarning, because it's a queer and fishy story, come to think of it; and the more proof we have the better."