We sat petrified, and Aggie's eyes were starting out of her head.
"All the trimmings," he went on, staring at the fire. "Innocent and unsuspecting tourists, lunch, laughter, boiled coffee, and cold ham. Ambush. The whole business--followed by highwaymen in flannel shirts and revolvers. Dead tourist or two, desperate resistance--everything."
Aggie rose, pale as an aspen. "You--you are joking!" she cried.
"Do I look like it?" he demanded fiercely. "I tell you there is going to be the whole thing. At the end the lovely girl will escape on horseback and ride madly for aid. She will meet the sheriff and a posse, who are out for a picnic or some such damfool nonsense, and--"
"Young man," Tish said coldly, "if you know all this, why are you sitting here and not alarming the authorities?"
"Pooh!" he said disagreeably. "It's a put-up scheme, to advertise the park. Yellowstone's got ahead of them this year, and has had its excitement, with all the papers ringing with it. That was a gag, too, probably."
"Do you mean--"
"I mean considerable," he said. "That red-headed movie idiot will be on a rise, taking the tourists as they ride through. Of course he doesn't expect the holdup--not in the papers anyhow. He happens to have the camera trained on the party, and gets it all. Result--a whacking good picture, revolvers firing blank cartridges, everything which people will crowd to see. Oh, it's good business all right. I don't mind admitting that."
Tish's face expressed the greatest rage. She rose, drawing herself to her full height.
"And the tourists?" she demanded. "They lend themselves to this imposition? To this infamy? To this turpitude?"
"Certainly not. They think it's the real thing. The whole business hangs on that. And as the sheriff, or whoever it is in the fool plot, captures the bandits, the party gets its money back, and has material for conversation for the next twenty years."
"To think," said Tish, "of our great National Government lending itself to such a scheme!"
"Wrong," said the young man. "It's a combination of Western railroads and a movie concern acting together."
"I trust," Tish observed, setting her lips firmly, "that the tourists will protest."
"The more noise, the better." The young man, though not more cheerful as to appearance, was certainly more talkative. "Trust a clergyman for yelling when his pocket's picked."
With one voice the three of us exclaimed: "Mr. Ostermaier!"
He was not sure of the name, but "Helen" had pointed the clergyman out to him, and it was Mr. Ostermaier without a doubt.
We talked it over with Bill when we got back, and he was not as surprised as we'd expected.