"Everybody drink!" he shouted thickly. "Drown yore sorrers whilst we drown ours. Money's made to spend--come on, boys, an' let's squander some." There is only one answer to that, in a saloon. Not a man in the place but had a convincing whiff of the reason why the boys from the Meadowlark had suddenly changed their tone. The curtain was up on Tony's play. CHAPTER THIRTEEN BUD FINDS THE STOLEN MONEY "There goes old Palmer himself," Bud exclaimed with some eagerness, as he and Gelle rode out from behind a low hill and started down the long, straight stretch beside Palmer's field of grain, fenced and rippling a green sea of wheat heads. "Now as the rest of the bunch is out of the way, it will be smooth riding. You know your part, Jelly. You just ride up to the house and do whatever you damn please, so long as you hold the cook and Blinker and any of the other men who happen to be home, right there at the house. I hope they've followed the boys to town, though. It's the logical thing for them to do unless they're bigger cowards than I take them to be." "Say, if you're goin' to sneak up to the stables, you'd better be drifting right now," Gelle told him. "If there's anybody down around the corrals, I'll have 'em up to the house before you need their absence very bad. Don't you worry about that, Bud." "All right. I did intend to ride past the house and come back the other way. It's just about as close. But this will do. Give me a few minutes' start, will you, Jelly?" Bud grinned, waved a hand in casual farewell and reined his sorrel out of the road and into the tangle of chokecherry bushes that grew in a shallow gully leading back toward the river. Once away from Gelle, however, the grin left his face and a smoldering purpose glowed in his eyes. He was on enemy soil; if any of Palmer's men were at home and he were discovered he would probably find himself dodging leaden slugs before he got away. Midday was not the best hour for invading an unfriendly man's premises, but he had decided that it would be safer after all than midnight, when Palmer would be easily alarmed. Besides, the dogs were chained during the day and turned loose at dusk. Skookum had told him that: and for what he wanted to find he needed the broad sunlight.