“Look for yourself, and you’ll recognize them as having been printed from the same plates as the one we’re carrying with us as a sample of Slippery Slim’s best work.”
“Je-ru-salem crickets! I’m knocked silly for a fact,” whimpered Perk; and then, as if mustering up his vanishing stamina he went on to add: “but however could they’ve got right there under that brick—conjurer’s black magic, looks like to me, partner, it sure does.”
“Nonsense! that part of it is easy enough to figure out,” asserted Jack, as usual very matter-of-fact; “the only thing that seems to border on the miraculous is our running across this packet of all the people in the Far West—it looks to me as if some sort of Destiny might be handling the cards—that all we have to do is to keep moving and everything’s bound to come our way.”
“Sure does seem like a snap, and that’s a fact,” agreed Perk, calming down a little as he began to grow more accustomed to the great discovery that had resulted from their deciding to drop down, and have a sociable cup of hot coffee; “but I’ll be danged if I c’n make head or tail out o’ this happening—now, what under the sun did anybody want to stick that wad o’ long green under the same adobes, I’d like to know, partner?”
“Oh! there might be any number of answers to that question, Perk; for instance didn’t we learn that it was the habit of Slim, or one of his busy bees, to jump across the border every little while with a load of the flimsy, and dole the stuff out to a number of agents he has working with him in this section of the country, also all the way over to Los Angeles and San Diego?”
“That was the spiel they gave us, for a fact, boss,” admitted Perk, wagging his head eagerly, as though he felt certain clever Jack would be able to figure things out, and hit on some sort of explanation that would cover these mysterious happenings.
“Well, this, then, might be one of his hidden caches—at certain times this unknown agent hides some real money in such a hole as this, and comes along another dark night it might be to pick up the big wad that was left in exchange for the small one he contributed. And that is the way the game runs, so I was told.”
“By gum! but what grand luck for us to come in on this deal, Jack—pretty soft, I’d call it, and neither of us had any hand in it either—just hit on this little bank by sheer chance! Goin’ to crib the loot, are you, partner?”
Jack scratched his head as though certain plans were flitting through it, and he must make a choice.
“Well, we have to start somewhere, you understand, Perk, and it looks like the finger of Fate might be pointing right at this shack, and telling us to get busy and pick up a strong clue that, if followed up, would take us straight to that hideout Slim’s got across in Mexico.”