“Wiley—Cap’n Wiley he calls himself.”
“Well, however does he happen to be hiring men for this yere mine? I don’t judge any that he is interested in it.”
“Not a whole lot. The mine is owned by a gent named Merriwell, and by this yere Hodge. Them two locates it.”
“Relocates it, you mean. I onderstand it were located original by another gent what is dead now. And I reckons some that it is through this other gent’s action that the man that is back o’ this yere jumping movement is going to stake his claim to the mine. I hears one o’ the boys say that if Bland ain’t back o’ the game, it sartin is a gent with heaps o’ money—one o’ them yere money kings we hears about.”
This conversation was of no simple interest to Hodge, for, although it did not reveal the instigator of the movement, it satisfied him that the plot did not originate among the men themselves. Some enemy of Frank Merriwell must be behind it all. As Sukes was dead, it was not easy for Bart to conjecture who this new enemy was.
After a few moments more the two ruffians finished the contents of the bottle and moved slowly away. This gave Hodge an opportunity to turn back toward his cabin, and he hastened to get away from that dangerous locality.
“It’s well for me that I suspected what was up,” he muttered, as he hurried along. “Under ordinary circumstances, failing to hear the men at work and hearing their singing and shouts, I should have hastened over and demanded to know the meaning of it. As a result they would have finished me in short order. Now I am prepared for them. But what can I do? What can I do alone?”
The situation seemed desperate and hopeless.
Another fellow in Bart’s position, and realizing his desperate peril, might have lost no time in getting out of the valley. Even though he happened to be a courageous person, his judgment might have led him to pursue such a course, for certainly it seemed a wild and hopeless plan to think of remaining there alone and contending against those ruffians.
Bart, however, was an obstinate chap and one in whom fear was an emotion seldom experienced. Not that he had always been fearless, for as a boy he had sometimes felt the thrill of terror; but his iron will had conquered, and time after time he had refused to submit to the approach of the slightest timidity, until at last fear seemed banished from his heart. Now, as he hastened back to the cabin, he revolved in his mind certain thoughts in regard to the situation; but not once did he entertain the idea of leaving the valley and abandoning it to those desperadoes.