"Somebody's spilled the beans!" was his stormy beginning. "We're gypped. Got any jackass? Gi'me the bottle. I'm a wreck!"
He dropped wearily into a chair and told of what he had discovered.
"How on earth did they get wind of it?" she asked.
Drummond threw out his hands in a gesture proclaiming ignorance and despair.
"There's one thing sure," she said thoughtfully. "He saw the paper only yesterday or last night for the first time. Else why did he ride way up there to see Filer? Jerkline Jo, then, has not yet seen it. They've heard about it, though, and Hooker was sent out to hunt for Filer. So the first thing the big rube will do when he reaches Ragtown will be to travel over toward Julia to overtake Jo and report. He'll get another horse, maybe, or hire a machine. Tweet would be in on it, no doubt, and would take him in his car. So what we've got to do, my dear boy, is to see that Hooker doesn't get to Jo with what he's learned."
"What can we do? He probably made a copy of what's written on Filer's paper, so, even if we were to hold him up and get it away from him, old Filer still would have the dope."
"Of course. That means that we've got to fix that old dub, too."
"What d'ye mean fix him?"
The girl shrugged. "Stop the leak some way," she replied. "If we can destroy Filer's paper and the copy Hooker's got, then we'll be the only ones who know the dope. We'll have the only copy in existence, in other words; and even if we fail to get at Jerkline Jo and learn the rest of it, we can hold her to our terms. She won't be able to do a thing without knowing what her father wrote on the paper that Filer has."
"Lucy, it's a crazy business," said Drummond. "Sometimes I think it's all a pipedream of that nutty old prospector. They're all bughouse—these old desert rats."