FullReads

The robbers remained on the crest perhaps twenty minutes, then they came striding down. They passed within a hundred yards of Laughing Bill Hyde, who lay flat in the wet grass midway of their descent. He watched them mount and ride out of sight, then he continued his painful progress up the hillside.

Weak lungs are not suited to heavy grades and slippery footing. Bill was sobbing with agony when he conquered the last rise and collapsed upon his face. He feared he was dying, every cough threatened a hemorrhage; but when his breath came more easily and he missed the familiar taste of blood in his mouth he rose and tottered about through the fog. He could discover no tracks; he began to fear the night would foil him, when at last luck guided his aimless footsteps to a slide of loose rock banked against a seamy ledge. The surface of the bank showed a muddy scar, already half obliterated by the rain; brief search among the near-by boulders uncovered the hiding-place of a pick and shovel.

For once in his life Mr. Hyde looked upon these tools with favor, and energetically tackled the business end of a “Number 2.” He considered pick-and-shovel work the lowest form of human endeavor; nevertheless he engaged in it willingly enough, and he had not dug deeply before he uncovered the side of a packing-case, labeled “Choice California Canned Fruits.” Further rapid explorations showed that the box was fitted with a loose top, and that the interior was well-nigh filled with stout canvas and moose skin bags. Bill counted them; he weighed one, then he sat down weakly and his hard, smoke-blue eyes widened with amazement.

“Suffering cats!” he whispered. He voiced other expletives, too, even more forcefully indicative of surprise. He was not an imaginative man; it did not occur to him to doubt his sanity or to wonder if he were awake, nevertheless he opened one of the pokes and incredulously examined its contents. “I’m dam’ if it ain’t!” he said, finally. “I should reckon they was ready to quit. Argentine! Why, Jack’ll bust the bottom out of a boat if he takes this with him. He’ll drown a lot of innocent people.” Mr. Hyde shook his head and smiled pityingly. “It ain’t safe to trust him with it. It ain’t safe–the thievin’ devil! There’s five hundred pounds if there’s an ounce!” He began to figure with his finger on the muddy shovel blade. “A hundred thousand bucks!” he announced, finally. “Them boys is all right!”

Slowly, reluctantly, he replaced the gold sacks, reburied the box, and placed the tools where he had found them; then he set out for home.

Don Antonio de Chiquito was contentedly munching an empty oat sack, doubtless impelled thereto by the lingering flavor of its former contents, when on the following morning Bill accosted him.

“Tony, I got to hand it to you,” the man said, admiringly. “You’re some pocket miner, and you speak up like a gent when you’re spoken to. I got some nice egg-shells saved up for you.” Then his voice dropped to a confidential tone. “We’re in with a passel of crooks, Tony. Evil associates, I call ’em. They’re bound to have a bad influence over us–I feel it a’ready, don’t you? Well, s’pose you meet me to-night at the gap in the hedge and we’ll take a walk?”

Don Antonio appeared in every way agreeable to the proposal, but to make certain that he would keep his appointment Bill led him down into the creek bottom and tied him securely, after which he removed a pack-saddle and a bundle of hay from the stable. The saddle he hid in the brush, the hay he spread before his accomplice, with the generous invitation: “Drink hearty; it’s on the house!” In explanation he went on: “It’s this way, Tony; they left the elevator out of that Anvil skyscraper, and I can’t climb stairs on one lung, so you got to be my six-cylinder oat-motor. We got a busy night ahead of us.”