“Where are the bags, Lenning?” queried Merriwell.
“Around back of this pile of bowlders. This way, if you want to see them.”
He stumbled around the base of the huge rock pile, Merriwell and Blunt following him. In the narrow space between the rocks and the foot of the steep cañon wall lay the two mail bags. They had not, as yet, been tampered with in any way.
Here was evidence of the truth of Lenning’s wild story—evidence that could not be doubted.
CHAPTER XLIV.
A FRUITLESS VIGIL.
Lenning certainly had been playing in hard luck. He had started into the hills with the very innocent idea of setting off a blast in the gulch, and fate had played him a scurvy trick by bringing down on him two scoundrels like Shoup and Geohegan. Toward the end of Lenning’s weird experience, however, fortune had smiled, and the plunder secured by the road agents had fallen into his hands.
“You’ve had a pretty tough time of it, Jode,” said Merriwell, his eyes on the mail bags, “but you’ve made a star play in getting back this government property. Great work! There was about one chance in a thousand that these mail pouches would come close enough for you to get a whack at them, but the chance came your way and you made the most of it. Where did Shoup and Geohegan unload the sacks?”
“Across the cañon, a little farther up,” Lenning replied.
“And you toted ’em down here and stowed ’em in a different place so as to hold ’em out on the measly junipers?” asked Blunt, his sloe-black eyes beginning to glow.