Ned suddenly paused and looked at Gus. He had been on the point of declaring that he did not care any more for a fight with raiders than he did for a game of snow-ball; but after a little reflection he decided that he wouldn’t say it. It would do very well to put into a letter, if he were going to write to Gus, but since the latter was there on the ground, and in a situation to learn all he wanted to know by making inquiries of others, Ned thought he had better, for once in his life, tell the truth. “You have got so you don’t care for what?” asked Gus, when his friend paused. “I don’t care to see them any more,” replied Ned. “We had a fearful time on the night they jumped down on us. They didn’t find any stock about the rancho to drive off, and so they shot into the house and tried to cut the doors down with axes.” “Gracious!” exclaimed Gus. “Were you in the house at the time?” “No, I wasn’t, and that’s just what frightened me. They treed me in a shed, and I don’t know what they would have done to me, if they had discovered me. But I’ll tell you about that by-and-by. It is my turn to ask questions now. Did you let your father know that you were coming down here?” “No, I didn’t. I didn’t _let_ anybody know it, but Sam Holmes found it out, as I told you in my last letter, and would have made me a great deal of trouble, if I hadn’t been too sharp for him. Where can I get a rig like yours, Ned? Is it the fashion?” “I bought it in Palos. It is _my_ fashion. I won’t dress as my cousin and all the other fellows about here do. They are a lot of boors!” “All except your cousin, of course.” “No, I don’t except even him. He goes looking like a day-laborer, and he’s rich, too. He has six thousand dollars that he made himself. More than that, when he becomes of age, he will step into a property worth forty thousand a year, and father and I will have to step out of it, and I’ll have to go behind a counter again.” “Who gets the property if anything happens to your cousin?” “I do.” “Where is he now?” “I don’t know, and neither does Zeke, his herdsman. He went away to his camp a few hours before the Greasers came through here, and we begin to fear that he was carried off by them, although we never heard of their taking a prisoner.” “Well, if I were in your boots I should hope that he would never come back again.” Ned looked down at the horn of his saddle, and made no reply in words; but his manner seemed to say, at least Gus so interpreted it, that if George had been so unfortunate as to fall into the hands of the Mexicans, and they should decide to keep him a life-long prisoner, Ned would waste no sorrow over it. CHAPTER VII. ZEKE’S LETTER.