failed to reveal
anything beyond the razor that had been dropped by the surprised
kidnapers.

"Lord, be merciful unto me, a skinner!" exclaimed Heine Schultz,
seating himself on a prostrate pine. "Wild Cat, you say one o' these
Jaspers was bendin' over Jo with this here razoo?"

"I'm sure it was that that he had in his hand," Hiram replied. "He was
the second one that I soaked, and I saw him drop it."

"Boy! Boy! That musta been some fight," observed Jim McAllen. "Think
of our ol' Wild Cat puttin' the three of 'em on the run! Man, how
comes it I miss all the good things in this life? Jo, was they aimin'
to cut your pretty throat?"

Jo shuddered. "Thank Heaven I was blindfolded!" was her grateful
thought. "But how ridiculous, boys! A razor! If they'd wanted to
kill me, at least one of them had a gat. Ask Hiram."

"Maybe they was just goin' to cut you loose and tell you why they'd
swiped you, when the Gentle Wild Cat went wild again," suggested Gulick.

"Cut a perfectly good lariat!" Jo picked it up. "Couldn't they have
untied the knots?"

Gulick took the lariat and examined it. "Thirty-five feet," he said.
"Rawhide--six-strand plait Been rubbed with cow's liver to soften 'er,
too. What else? Whoop! What's this?"

He was studying the honda, also of rawhide, pressed flat when soaked
and riveted in shape, a plaited button on the end of the lariat proper
to keep it from slipping through the hole.

"Letters cut in this," Gulick announced. "T. H.' Who's that stand
for?"

All went silent for a time, thinking; then Hiram Hooker said quietly,
as if what he suggested mattered but little:

"Tehachapi Hank."

All talked at once now. Not one was there that was not sure Hiram had
hit upon a clew.

"And Tehachapi Hank's a bad man," said Heine. "Admitted it himself.
And he's a side-kick of that cholo-faced Drummond!"

Study of the razor, now red with rust, showed the amateur detectives
nothing.

"And ye saw only the face of one of 'em, Hiram?" Blink Keddie asked it.

"Only one. The others managed to keep their masks on."

"Tehachapi Hank and Al Drummond them other two was," said McAllen
positively. "Too bad it wasn't one o' them you knocked the mask off
of, Wild Cat."

"And you never saw this fella that you got a look at?" asked Schultz.

Hiram shook his head. "I didn't even see him well," he added.
"Through revolver smoke--and the rain pouring--and next instant his
face didn't look lik