A FIGHT FOR FORTUNE.
The sheriff of Calabazos was sitting on the stoop outside the Government
Assay Office early the next day when he was startled by a loud clatter
of hoofs up the mountain side. He looked up from his absorbing
occupation of whittling a piece of wood, and saw coming rattling down
the trail at a breakneck speed four horsemen. They were Noggy Wilkes,
Hank Higgins, Fred Reade and Luther Barr.
“Hullo, Chunky,” hailed the sheriff to the government clerk, who was
inside the office—a rough, clap-boarded affair on which appeared a
sign, which announced in white letters that it was the “GOVERNMENT ASSAY
OFFICE.” “Come on out here, Barton, here come them fellers that got here
yesterday with that thar skyscraper thing of theirn and purty near
bothered the life out of Skol Scovgen, the blacksmith, trying to git him
to make a conniption of some kind for it.”
The young man who languidly consented to serve Uncle Sam in the capacity
of claim clerk joined him on the porch. He also gazed interestedly at
the group of horsemen, who were now compelled to slow up by the
steepness of the trail.
“Seem ter be in quite a hurry,” he commented, picking his teeth with a
quill pick that he had acquired on his last visit to what he was pleased
to term civilization.
“Yep,” assented the sheriff, “I reckon they’ve bin up stakin’ out a mine
or suthin’. I hear they was talking in ther hotel last night while it
was rainin’ so pesky hard about a lost mine and some chap named
Witherbee.”
“Oh, I remember that feller Witherbee,” struck in the clerk. “Went east
a while ago. I recollect that the gossip was that he’d made quite a
piece of money on a mine or had some sort of mine hidden back in the
hills thar. I heard it was the one that belonged to old Fogg, who
disappeared.”
“Wall, ther fellers seem to have something of ther same kind on their
minds,” exclaimed the sheriff, as the party, having now left the uneven
trail, came clattering down the road on their wiry horses.
It could now be seen that Luther Barr, who rode in advance of the rest,
carried some sort of a paper in his hand. The arrival of the cortege had
attracted quite a crowd, who gathered about the Assay Office as the
riders came clattering up.
“Is this the Government Assay Office?” queried Luther Barr as they drew
rein and dismounted.
“Reckon so,” replied the dandified clerk with a languid air.
“Oh, you reckon so, do you?” was the impatient reply. “Well, kindly
bestir yourself a little. I wish to file a claim to a mine.”
“Yep—Got ther papers all made out regilar?”
“Yes, here they are. We’ve gotten them all right and correct. I guess
there’ll be no trouble about that part of it, eh, Reade?”
“I guess not,” answered the individual addressed, tying his horse to the
hitching bar in front of the assay office.
“All right, gentlemen,” at length remarked the clerk, getting to his
feet, “I guess if you come inside we can fix you up.”
“Say, partner,” put in the sheriff, “yer don’t mind my askin’ you a
question, do yer?”
“Not at all,” beamed Luther Barr, who was in high good humor, “ask a
dozen.”
“Wall, is this yar mine yer goin’ ter locate the ‘Lost Mine’ that old
Jared Fogg, who disappeared, used ter own?”
“I believe it is. Why do you ask?”
“Wall, if you’ll excuse my jay-bird curiosity, I’d jes like to know how
in thunder you ever located it.”
“That is our secret, my man,” replied the eastern millionaire briskly.
“All you need to know, and this gentleman here, is that we have it
legally located, isn’t it?”
“Beg your pardon,” remarked the sheriff. “No harm done?”
“Oh, none at all,” smiled Barr. “And now, I think we’ll go in and make
the deal final.”
They entered the office with the clerk, Hank Higgins and Noggy Wilkes
remaining outside.
As Barr and Reade passed into the office the former whispered to Hank
Higgins.
“Now you and Wilkes do your duty. I don’t anticipate any interruption,
but if there is any——”
The two western ruffians tapped the butts of their Colts knowingly.
“We’ll attend to that, guv’ner,” they assured him.
Silence fell on the village street after Barr and Reade had entered the
office. The crowd outside stood gaping in curiosity as to what could be
the business that had brought the strangers galloping in such evident
haste to the assay office. The sheriff, with a side glance at Hank
Higgins and Noggy Wilkes, resumed his whittling.
Suddenly the quiet was broken by the sharp chug-chug of an approaching
automobile.
“Here comes a choo-choo cart,” remarked the sheriff, springing to his
feet and peering up the road.
“That’s what it is,” answered a man in the crowd, “and coming like blue
blazes, too.”
As he spoke, the boys’ auto swept round a wooded curve and came tearing
along toward the assay office. In the tonneau stood Bart Witherbee, his
face strained and eager, and holding a crumpled paper in his hand. Frank
was at the wheel and the other boys were beside their miner friend in
the tonneau.
“Seem ter be in a hurry,” drawled the sheriff, as the party swept up to
the low porch, the crowd falling back to make way for them with
wondering glances.
Luther Barr’s lean face appeared at the dusty window of the Government
Office.
“A hundred dollars if you file that claim in time,” he shouted to the
astonished clerk, who thought the old man had gone suddenly mad.
Bart Witherbee made a flying leap from the auto, and almost before it
stopped had raced up the steps. But before he could gain the door of the
assay office he found himself looking into the muzzles of two revolvers
held by Hank Higgins and Noggy Wilkes.
[Illustration: Bart Witherbee made a flying leap from the auto.]
“Don’t come no further, pardner,” grinned Hank. “It might be onhealthy
for you.”
“Here, here; what’s all this?” growled the sheriff. “I don’t allow no
shooting in my bailiwick. Put up them guns.”
“Let me get by, Hank Higgins,” exclaimed Bart Witherbee angrily.
“Hey, there; what’s that name you mentioned, partner?” asked the sheriff
eagerly.
“Hank Higgins, and there’s his partner, Noggy Wilkes,” exclaimed the
miner. “The third one, Bill Jenkins, is in jail.”
“Wall, if here ain’t a bit of Christmas luck,” shouted the sheriff
exultingly. “I want ’em both for a dozen crimes. Here, you; you’re under
arrest. Don’t move or I’ll fire.”
But Noggy Wilkes, with a desperate leap, had gained the side of his
horse that stood, western fashion, unhitched, with the reins lying on
the horn of his saddle. With one bound the desperado was mounted and
galloping off down the trail. The sheriff sent two bullets after him,
but both missed. Hank Higgins, however, was not so fortunate. With a
muttered:
“I guess you got me right, sheriff,” he submitted to arrest.
In the meantime, Bart Witherbee had burst like a whirlwind into the
Government office, upsetting a desk and spilling a bottle of ink over
Luther Barr, who had angrily intercepted him.
“Don’t file that claim to Fogg’s mine,” he shouted, waving his papers
above his head. “I’ve got a prior one.”
“You have—where?” gasped the astonished clerk.
“File that claim,” ordered Luther Barr. “I’ll report you to Washington
if you don’t.”
“Hold your horses,” replied the clerk easily, “there seems to be some
sort of dispute here. Do you lay claim to the mine?” he asked, turning
to Witherbee.
“I sure do,” replied the miner, “and here’s my claim—the last will and
testament of Jared Fogg, otherwise Jack Riggs. He leaves his mine and
the treasure he has secretly hoarded from it and buried under the floor
of his hut to me.”
“And who might you be?” asked the clerk eagerly.
“I am Bart Witherbee, and can easily prove it,” replied the miner,
drawing from his pocket a number of papers.
The clerk quickly perused them and also the will.
“What time did you stake the mine?” he asked, suddenly turning to Luther
Barr.
“At daylight to-day,” replied the millionaire. “I guess we win.”
“I guess not,” snapped back Witherbee. “Old man Fogg died shortly after
midnight, as I can easily prove, and therefore the will became operative
at that time.”
“I see you know some law,” remarked the clerk. “I guess, Mr. Barr, your
claim is not valid.”
But Barr, raging furiously, had gone.
Outside the door he saw the boys. Beside himself with rage, he shook his
fist at them. His rage was too intense to permit him to speak. The
sheriff and everybody in the crowd insisted on shaking hands with Bart
Witherbee and hearing again and again his strange story and the details
of how the will had been found hidden in the hut. At last, however,
accompanied by the sheriff, whose duty it was in that rough community to
look after old Fogg’s, or Jack Riggs’ body, the boys and their miner
friend managed to tear themselves away and sped back to the hermit’s hut
in their auto. They found everything as they had left it, and, on
tearing up the floor, according to the instructions left in the old
man’s will, they found that a huge pit had been dug there, which was
filled to the brim with ore which the old miser had painstakingly
carried through his tunnel from his mine. A rough estimate valued it at
$350,000.
“How do you suppose Luther Barr ever managed to locate the mine?” asked
Frank wonderingly.
“That puzzled me, too, at first,” said the sheriff, “but now, since I
have found that Hank Higgins and Noggy Wilkes knew Wild Bill Jenkins, it
is a mystery no longer. Wild Bill boasted some time ago that he knew
where the mine was, but he was forced to become a fugitive from justice
before he had time to file any claim to it.”
Suddenly the voice of Billy Barnes, who had wandered out onto the trail
with a rifle, was borne to their ears:
“Boys! Boys! Come quick!” he cried. There was urgent entreaty in his
tone.