"This here is some interesting to me, son," remarked the big sheriff, as Allan paused to get his breath, for he was talking so fast and so eagerly that he had almost exhausted himself. "And so, after you learned where he was, and how he came to be thar, I reckon now you boys started to climb up and rescue the other--how?"

"That's what we did, sir," broke in Giraffe, eagerly. "Four of us, counting the guide, managed to climb up the mountain, and with a rope we carried, hooked Aleck up off that ledge the prettiest you ever saw, that's what we did," with a defiant look toward old Artemus, who was sniffing through all this talk, just as though he refused to believe a word of it.

"And that's the way we came to have him in our camp, sir," Allan went on to say. "We heard his story, and believed it, too. He's got a mother, and a lot of little sisters, who look to him to carry out the work his father started. But every one who ever hears a word about that hidden mine Jerry Rawson once found, seems to be just crazy to take it away from his widow. She has hardly a single friend to trust.

Even her relatives plot to beat her out of this valuable mining property, and try all sorts of things, in hopes of getting hold of the secret. And now you know just where we stand, Mr. Sheriff. As scouts we must stay friends of Aleck. He _was_ here, just as you know; but he's gone away, and none of us know where to. Thad took him off during the night, and all he said was we might expect to see him again when he showed up. So you can't pump any information out of us, you see."

"And even if we knew anything, we wouldn't tell," a.s.serted Giraffe, belligerently, feeling that the honor of a scout was in question right then.

The sheriff looked from one to another of those four boyish faces.

"By George! now, I reckon it wouldn't be any use in me tryin' to scare you by threatening to jail you for aiding in the escape of a desperate criminal, would it?" he remarked, pretending to look very serious, but with that twinkle again in evidence, as Allan saw.

"You just couldn't;" declared Giraffe, while b.u.mpus began to move a little uneasily in his seat; "in the first place, we don't know anything more'n we've told you; secondly, we haven't a.s.sisted anybody to escape, because we're right here, johnny-on-the-spot, and it's our scoutmaster who's gone; and then, last of all, there ain't any desperate criminal at all; only a poor, persecuted boy, with the grit that you just want your own chap to show, Mr. Sheriff,--ready to fight everybody, for the sake of his mother and sisters."

Sheriff Bob wagged his head slowly, as though mentally digesting what the other had just said.

"H'm! that remains to be seen, boy," he remarked; although Giraffe believed he did not feel one-half as ferocious as he chose to look just then. "Duty is duty, no matter how unpleasant it may seem, sometimes."

"I'm glad to hear you take that sensible view of the matter, Mr.

Sheriff," said the old Denver lawyer, in his oily tones. "You mustn't believe one-tenth of what boys say. They would as soon prevaricate as eat their breakfast; that is, some of the breed would, though doubtless your son is an exception to the rule. These scouts, as they choose to call themselves, have fixed up a story to suit themselves, and they hope to enlist your sympathy; but I know that a stern sense of duty will compel you to close your ears to anything they may say. I demand that you exercise every effort possible, looking to the immediate arrest of my rascally nephew, Alexander Rawson, whom I accuse of stealing valuable papers from my pocketbook while I was a guest under his mother's roof, and then disappearing."

"Oh! very well, sir, don't excite yourself about my movements,"

remarked Sheriff Bob, a.s.suming a pompous air, though Allan thought he winked slily in his direction while speaking. "You will find no cause to complain to my superiors concerning any shortcomings on my part.

And up to now, you must admit I have been unflagging in my endeavor to locate the fugitive from justice. Make your mind easy, Mr. Rawson, I see my duty clear in the premises, and can be depended on to do it."

Watching his chance a little later Allan followed the sheriff, when the latter went to get a drink of water near by. Artemus looked as though he wanted to keep them from having any communications out of his range of hearing; but he sank back in his seat again, plainly afraid of invoking the anger of the big sheriff, who, he already felt, did not feel any too warmly toward him and his cause.

And as they sat down by the little stream to dip up some of the clear water with the tin cup Sheriff Bob had made sure to fetch along, Allan made it a point to tell the other all that Aleck had said about the motives of his father's lawyer brother, and how for a long time he had bothered the widow, trying to find out if she knew anything about the hidden mine; which until lately of course she had not.

Allan knew how to talk. Moreover, he had an interested listener in the officer, and that counted for a great deal. Besides, he felt deeply for the persecuted boy, and his heart was filled with a desire to a.s.sist him secure the legacy left by his father, than whom no living soul had ever gazed upon the hidden mine.

Sheriff Bob listened to all that the boy said. Several times he scratched his head reflectively, and made a grimace, as though conflicting forces had begun to engage him in an inward war.

And when finally Allan declared that he now knew all, the officer drew a long breath, and remarked, quietly:

"I seem to smell a pretty good-sized rat about this game Mr. Artemus is putting up; but as I said, the warrant he swore out is in my hands for serving, and I just reckon I'll have to do my sworn duty and arrest this same Aleck----that is, if so be he shows up while we're around here."

Allan looked him squarely in the eye; and he was sure one of the lids above the blue orbs of the official dropped a little in a suggestive way.

He too drew a long breath, and with a smile on his boyish face, said as he arose:

"Thank you, Mr. Sheriff, thank you very much!"

CHAPTER XXII.

THE GUARDIAN OF THE SILVER LODE.

As has been mentioned before, Thad had a plan in view when he left the camp in company with Aleck, somewhere about midnight. Though for certain reasons which he considered good, he had not seen fit to take a single one of his comrades into his confidence, the scoutmaster believed that the only way for Aleck to win his own game was to find the long-lost mine, and take possession of the same in the name of his father, who had been the original discoverer of the lode.

Scores of hungry prospectors, besides Kracker, had done everything in their power to locate the mine; though none had descended to his last unworthy methods of trying to torture Jerry Rawson's son, in the hope of profiting thereby. As the claim of the original discoverer rested only on a scant foundation, of course the man lucky enough to find the silver lode again would have a right to hold possession, in the eye of the law. He might choose to pay the widow something, but even that was a matter resting solely upon his conscience.

Thad had a reason for carrying the only lantern belonging to the scouts; and he hoped that if they were so lucky as to find that Aleck's rude little chart told the truth, they might utilize that means of illumination when entering the mine.

Of course both of them carried their guns, for there was no telling when they could return to camp. An arrangement had been with Allan, so that day and night there would be a sign shown, calculated to tell the absent ones whether the coast were clear, or the lawyer and sheriff still hovered near by, waiting to entrap the Rawson boy, should he show up.

They had moved along for some time, when Aleck broke the silence by saying, with considerable feeling in his voice:

"It makes me glad to know you believed what I told you, Thad, about that business of my uncle. If you could only meet up with him once, I'm sure you'd know the tricky kind of man he is, just from his looks, and the smooth way he talks. But no matter what they all do and say, I'm just bound to carry my plans out. My mother approves of what I am doing; and she is thinking of me, and praying all the time I'm up here, trying to take dad's place."

"Don't mention it," said Thad, quickly. "Of course we all believe every word you told us, no matter whether we've met this rascally uncle of yours or not. Our chum Step Hen did, and I reckon he wasn't much impressed with him, from the way he talked. And as you belong to the scouts, our first duty is to stand by you through thick and thin."

"Only as long as you believe in my word, Thad," added the other.

"That's true," returned the other, quickly; "even a scout has no business sticking up for a comrade when he knows the other is in the wrong; but we believe in you, Aleck. And if only you could find that mine, I feel sure all of this funny business would stop. Once you had put in a claim, with the proper witnesses, and hurried to file it before the court, n.o.body could steal it away. And that's going to be just where the Boy Scouts can help you."

"Well, we'll know more than we do now, before a great many hours,"

a.s.serted the miner's son; "unless this little map is all wrong, and poor dad only believed he had found a rich lode. But remember, he brought home specimens that were nearly pure silver; and every one who saw them said they beat the world for richness. I can remember my dad saying that there were tons and tons without end of that same sort, in _his_ mine. And then he was suddenly taken down sick, and died with the secret untold. All these long years, when we've been poor and wanting many things, there that secret lay in my hand, oh! hundreds of times, and I never dreamed of it still accident showed me the paper, back of the gla.s.s in the little pocket mirror that dad had carried with him a long time."

They relapsed into silence again for a long time, each busy with his thoughts. Aleck knew what few simple directions his rude chart carried; he had gazed at it so many times that it was photographed on his mind, and there had been no need for him to rip the seam of his coat, and take the slip of faded paper out. Kracker had not dreamed how near the coveted clue had been to his hands, at the time he actually held the boy, and closely examined all his pockets.

"It's lucky," remarked Thad, after fully an hour more had pa.s.sed, with both boys pushing forward steadily all the time, over rugged ways that severely tried their abilities--"it's lucky, I say, that we are heading exactly away from the direction where that Sheriff, and your uncle, must be coming from."

"Yes, but I knew we'd do that before we ever started out," replied Aleck.

"You've been sizing up the region all day in camp, and laying your plans, if the chance ever came to try them out; isn't that so, Aleck?"

"You never said truer words in your life, Thad," answered the other.

"I found a pretty high rock on which I could perch; and that gave me a chance to look over in this region with those fine gla.s.ses of yours.

And I tell you now, it gave me a great thrill when I recognized something dad had marked on that little chart. It seemed just as if I could hear his voice calling me from the grave, and telling me I was doing the right thing--to go ahead, no matter who tried to stop me."

"What sort of a land-mark was it you saw?" asked the other scout.

"Why, you see, he made a rough sketch of a rock that looks a whole lot like a human head," Aleck went on to say, earnestly.

"Why, h.e.l.lo! I remember noticing that very same rock, the time I went up to take a look, and see if I could get a glimpse of our hunter squad. While about it, I turned the gla.s.ses around, to see if there were any sheep on the sides of the mountains to the south. And it was right then I saw that outline of a face, cut in the rock, just like somebody had used a giant chisel and made it--nose, mouth, chin, forehead, all complete. It startled me a little at first, Aleck."

"I should guess it would, Thad; but think what it meant to _me_, when I had seen it on dad's little chart; and knew that the entrance to his hidden mine lay almost in the shadow of that face! I think he looked on it as the rock guardian to his silver lode."

"Is that a fact?" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Thad, partaking in a measure of the excitement that shook the frame of his companion; "Well, that's more than you've seen fit to tell me before, Aleck; and it's some interesting, I own up."

"I meant to tell you everything, Thad, believe me," declared the other, quickly, and with some emotion. "After the fine way you and your chums rescued me from that shelf up on the face of the cliff, and said you'd stand by me, no matter what happened, why, I made up my mind that I would keep nothing back from you. By to-morrow I expected to take the map out from the lining of my coat, where it was sewed in by my mother's own dear hands, so that n.o.body would ever think things had been disturbed at all. And now, I'm surely hoping that we'll both set eyes on dad's mine before another dawn breaks."

"For your sake, Aleck, I hope that will come true. You deserve all the luck in the world, and that's what every one of our fellows say.

But only for this moonlight I'm afraid we'd have had a hard job of it, coming all this distance; because the way is mighty rough, and both of us have stumbled lots of times as it is. We might have used the lantern, of course, but that would have put it out of business later, when we wanted it bad; and besides, it's flickering might have told our enemies where we were."