The Boy Aviators in Record Flight; Or, The Rival Aeroplane

“Yes; I thought you were dead. We all did, and I started out to find your mysterious mine. As you never filed a claim to it, I thought I had a right to stake it.”

“You are right; I never filed a claim to it. I did not want other miners to come to the neighborhood as soon as they found how rich it was. So I worked it all alone. As I got the good gold out I hid it all away.”

“Yes; go on,” said Bart Witherbee breathlessly.

“Well, I saw that some day sooner or later someone was bound to discover it if I worked openly in it, so I started constructing a tunnel. The mouth of it is under that hearthstone, and the other end emerges into the shaft of the lost mine. For many years I have used it, and no one has ever suspected that old Jared Fogg, the hermit who lived in this hut, had thousands of dollars in gold. I am rich – ha – ha – I am rich.”

The old man’s face became convulsed.

“But,” he went on, “now that I am dying – ah, I know death when it is coming on – I have a great wish to right a wrong I did years ago. My name was not always Jared Fogg. It was once Jack Riggs. I was once a bandit and a robber and did many, many wicked things. But one weighs on my conscience more heavily than any of the others. One night we held up the Rio Bravo stage. There was fighting, and I shot the stage driver and his wife, who, when her husband fell from the box, seized the reins and attempted to drive on. With them was their child, a lad of three or four years. That disgusted me with crime. I reformed from that night. I took the lad and raised him till he was six or seven, when he was stolen from me by a wandering circus. I have never seen him since. If I could see him, now that he has grown to man’s estate, and tell him that on my death bed I beg his forgiveness for my wicked deed, I would die happy. All these years I have thought of him. If I only knew where he was now.”

“Would you know him again if you saw him?” Bart Witherbee’s voice shook strangely, and several times during the old man’s recital he had passed his hand across his brow as if striving to recollect something. Now his eye shone with a strange light, and he bent forward eagerly:

“Yes, among a thousand!”

“How?”

“By a peculiar mark on his arm, where he was shot accidentally by one of my gang in the fight following the killing of his father.”

Bart rolled up his sleeve, and the old man gave a terrible cry as his eyes fell on the dark-red scar the boys had often noticed.

“Forgive – ,” he cried, stumbling to his feet and stretching out his hands as if to keep from falling.

The next moment he had fallen forward with a crash.

He was dead.

CHAPTER XXV.

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.