WHEN DREAMS COME TRUE.
Merry sat down on a chunk of adobe which had fallen out of the wall.
Placing the lamp in the niche left by the chunk in its fall, he hooked
up a knee between his hands, and grew thoughtful. Clancy found a seat
for himself, and waited for the result of his chum's reflections. He
waited so long that he became impatient.
"What's at the back of your head, Chip?" he asked. "There isn't a thing
at the back of mine."
Frank dropped his knee, and looked at his watch.
"It's one o'clock in the morning," said he. "Let's have lunch."
"An ounce of grub is worth a pound of theory any old time," said the
red-headed fellow cheerfully. "I'll lug in the canteens and the chuck
bag."
He went out and returned with them, and he and Frank got busy with some
sardine sandwiches, crackers, and cheese which McGurvin had provided for
a "hand-out." The water in the canteens was refreshing, and likewise the
fare, rough though it was.
"In the first place, Clan," reasoned Merry, "we've got to consider that
it isn't exactly a cinch that Borrodaile has been here. It's probable,
but not absolutely certain. Some desert Arab may have raided the place
and carted away his stuff."
"Not likely," returned Clancy, swallowing a mouthful of sandwich. As he
was about to take another bite, he had a thought that caused him to look
up quickly. "Unless," he added. "Blunt and his friends did the looting.
They came this way during the afternoon. They're not here now. Where are
they?"
Frank shook his head.
"You might just as well ask where Porter is, or the prof," said he.
"It's hopeless to try to keep track of Barzy Blunt, or to figure out
from what he's done, what he's going to do next. From what McGurvin
said, I thought Blunt had come here with some of his friends. Maybe he
did. Possibly he collected the professor's goods and chattels and rode
off with them. It isn't likely, though. Cow-punchers wouldn't be apt to
do all that freighting on horseback. Would they take the trouble to
balance a cot across one of their horses and ride away with it? Or the
professor's trunk? I guess Blunt and his friends wouldn't have much use
for the professor's plunder; so it's a fair surmise they didn't take it.
Some one else did, that's evident. The testimony all points to the
professor himself."
"He left Gold Hill to come to Happenchance," remarked Chancy. "Why
didn't he tell us about it? It couldn't have been such an awful secret
he had to keep it to himself."
"It's a deuce of a hard thing to figure out," said Merry. "I don't think
we ever will understand it until Borrodaile bobs up and clears away the
mystery himself. I've a hunch that Blunt is the key to this riddle of
the professor's whereabouts. The Wonder may be somewhere around--that
is, if McGurvin wasn't lying."
"You can bank on it, Chip, that a robber like McGurvin wouldn't tell the
truth if it was to his interest to tell something else."
"He said he didn't know Nick Porter, a man who has been roaming these
deserts all his life. If that's the truth, it's remarkable."
"Now you're getting back to Porter again. I thought we had agreed to let
him go, and pin our faith to Barzy Blunt."
"Blunt, I think, is our best bet. I merely rang in Porter to give you my
estimate of McGurvin's truthfulness. Porter couldn't have been at the
McGurvin place, or we'd have found his horse."
"That's so." Clancy yawned. "I move we stay here all night and knock
around a little in the morning. A good deal of the night has gone,
anyway, and I guess we can stick out the rest of it in Happenchance.
What do you say?"
"It's important to locate the professor," said Merry. "Dad's telegram
puts that right up to us. Now that we're here, we'd better wait until
morning and see if anything develops. We'll bring in the machines, hunt
a couple of soft rocks, and see if we can't get a little sleep."
The motor cycles were trundled into the old house, the light put out,
and the lads lay down on the old clay floor with lumps of broken adobe
for pillows. In spite of the hard beds, the lack of even the most meager
comforts, both Merry and Clancy were soon asleep.
Merry awoke, with a beam of sun in his eyes. He sat up, staring
incredulously around him, and could hardly believe that several hours
had passed. The sun was shining into the old ruin through the hanging
door. Merry looked over toward the spot where he had last seen his chum,
and found that Clancy was also sitting up.
"Top of the morning to you, Chip," grinned Clancy. "How many lumps on
your backbone? I've counted a dozen on mine. This mattress was harder
than the one in our room at Pophagan's--and that's going some. Any new
theories this morning?"
"Haven't had time to think up any," laughed Merry. "It doesn't seem more
than a minute since I put out the light and--er--turned in. What's
happened, since I closed my eyes, is a perfect blank. How about that
spring? It isn't big enough for a cold plunge, but we can duck our
heads. Maybe that will clear our brains a little."
"Me for the spring!" cried Clancy, bounding to his feet.
Leaving the old house, they hurried to the spring, which they had
located on their previous visit to Happenchance. The water was cool and
clear, and the pool into which the water dripped was big enough for a
partial ducking. Handkerchiefs served for towels, and there was a lot of
good-natured joshing as the chums dabbed away at their dripping faces.
"On the way back to the grub bag," Clancy finally remarked, "I move that
we make a detour by way of the ledge and the professor's mine. Let's
make sure, Chip, that the claim is still there. Maybe it has vanished,
like the prof."
The claim was found where it had been left, although some of the ore had
vanished. The shelf was gouged and disfigured as though some one had put
down a blast, blown a hole in the vein, and then taken away a lot of the
ore.
"By Jove," exclaimed Merry, "here's something else we might lay to
Blunt. I don't think, though, that he'd come here and steal any of the
professor's ore."
"I've got my own ideas about that," said Clancy. "Some one has been
here, anyhow. Did the professor do this, when he came for his household
goods?"
"He wouldn't know how to drill a hole, cap a fuse, and touch off a stick
of giant powder. No, Clan, it wasn't Professor Borrodaile. The deeper we
get into this business, the more complicated it becomes."
The outcropping of ore was wonderfully rich. It was of the sort known as
wire gold, and the rock was covered with a fuzzy yellow web of pure
metal. What ore had been blown out by? the blast had been gathered up
slick and clean.
"A bagful of that stuff," said Merry, "would mean a whole lot in dollars
and cents. Somebody has been 'high grading.'"
"And he dropped a little of his swag as he went off with it," added
Clancy, stepping off a few yards from the ledge and pointing to a bit of
ore that lay on the ground. "There is some of the fellow's loot," Clancy
went on. "It lies gold side up, and shimmers in the sun like a double
eagle."
He looked at the sample for a few moments, and then slipped it into his
pocket.
"Finding is keeping," he grinned. "This ought to pay you back, Chip, for
the five you gave McGurvin in exchange for stuff that was actually worth
about ten cents."
Frank ran past Clancy for a couple of rods straight out into the valley.
"It was a thundering bad leak, Clan," he called, stooping down and
gathering in another ore sample. "That makes two chunks of the stuff the
thief lost. He was probably in a rush to get away, and didn't notice how
the ore was dribbling out."
"Wait a minute, Chip," said Clancy, "and let's figure this down as fine
as we can. There are prints of a horse's hoofs along the course where
this ore was dropped. Ballard ought to be here to do the Sherlock Holmes
racket for us. I'm not very swift at this detective business, but I'll
take my oath the thief loaded his bag of loot on a horse."
"You don't think, do you," said Frank dryly, "that he'd carry a bag
weighing two or three hundred pounds over his shoulder? Of course, he
had a pack animal. It wasn't a horse, though, but a burro."
"How did you guess it was a burro?"
"Small hoofmarks."
"Oh, scissors! Of course, of course! This claim of the professor's is
too valuable to be left unguarded. He ought to begin working it, or else
sell it to some one who'll see that it's taken care of. Let's take our
gold ore and make tracks for the chuck sack. I fell hungry, somehow."
As they started across the valley, at a distance of perhaps a hundred
feet from the spot where Frank had picked up the second bit of ore, they
found another. Fifty feet from that they found a fourth piece; and then
as they paused at the lane leading through the heart of the ruined camp,
their eyes, wandering toward the took-in one glittering point after
another--each point a scrap of wire gold, glimmering in the sun.
"The thief left a trail," exclaimed Merry, "from ledge directly to the
gap."
"And how much farther, Chip?" asked Clan excitedly. "Say, maybe we can
follow that trail and find where the fellow went!"
It was a startling proposition, and yet one that might be easily
demonstrated.
"We'll try it," said Frank, "but not till after breakfast. Come on,
Clan, and we'll take another fall out of our rations; then ho, for the
golden trail!"
As Merry spoke, a queer idea popped suddenly into his mind. He stopped
short and stared at Clancy. The latter evidently was fired with the same
notion.
"Ballard's dream!" muttered Clancy, rubbing a hand over his wet hair.
"Hang it all, Chip, this is quite a jolt to a fellow who isn't at all
superstitious. The golden trail! Why, Pink saw it three times hand
running, in his sleep!"