"I want to see the Warden," he cried loudly, his temper considerably ruffled, "an' I'll flatten ye out if ye try to stop me.... It's a matter o' life an' death," he added impressively.
"I am the Warden, my lad," spoke a kindly voice from the end of the room, "but I'm not a doctor. Let the boy come up, Jackson"—this to the proprietor. "Good honest sand won't hurt any one, and you know water is scarce in this drought-stricken country. Why, the man's hurt!" The kindly official was gazing at a nasty gash on his visitor's bare arm from which the blood was slowly trickling.
The Shadow looked and noticed his wound for the first time.
"It must have been that buster I got that did it," he reflected quickly; "but I can't very well bring the horse into this here conversation." Aloud he said, "Oh, that's nothin'; I tripped on a stump in the dark, that's all."
The Warden examined the rent again closely and smiled incredulously.
"All right, young man," said he; "now fire along with your story, for I must be over at the office in half an hour."
There was no one else in the room at the moment, so pulling Mackay's sketch plan of the mines from its hiding-place and putting it on the table before the Warden, he reeled off the story of the finding of Golden Flat and the attempted jumping of the mines by Macguire and his party. The Warden listened patiently through it all, nor did he once interrupt the narrator.
"So that's where the redoubtable Macguire went the other day," he commented, when the Shadow had finished. "And Mackay dished him at his own game, did he? I tell you what, young fellow, I'd have given a fiver to see that fight, I would."
"An' it would hiv been worth it," agreed the Shadow, complacently. "But say, is ye goin' to make the claims right for the boys at Golden Flat? Macguire'll be along in a minute——"
"Stop right there, my lad. You've done your mates a great service by getting in first, for if Macguire had seen me before you I would have had no option but to make out the leases in his name. But when you come to me from men like Mackay, Emu Bill, and Nuggety Dick, pioneers every one, and tell me the story you have done, I feel that my language won't be full enough to express my feelings when I see that scoundrelly trickster, Macguire. But come, tell me how you managed to get in ahead of him. You know I can scarcely swallow that yarn about walking all the way. Why, it must be close on an eighty-mile trail!"