“Well, you can see that this party is beckoning as if he wanted to have us speed up our horses still more on this sharp rise. He’s anxious to have us join him. Can you guess why, Bob?”
“Say, d’ye suppose that he could have sent that queer note?” asked the other.
“Just what I’ve been thinking,” replied Frank, nodding. “Look at it yourself, and see if it doesn’t stand to reason.”
“Well, so far as I can see, the fellow who sent that letter without a signature at the bottom would be the only one expecting somebody to come over here from Circle Ranch,” Bob remarked.
“Sure. And as we get closer I’m beginning to think I know who he is,” said Frank.
“Someone you met when over here before, I reckon.”
“Yes, now I’m sure of it,” the other answered, slowly. “His name is Sandy McCoy, and he’s a young Scotchman who drifted to the mines a year or so back. I remember he told me he used to be an engineer on board a tramp steamer; but, getting tired of the sea, he started in to try mining.”
“What did you think of him at the time?” asked Bob.
“As near as I can remember I was favorably impressed. He seemed to be a bluff fellow, and his eyes were as steady as a rock. On the whole, McCoy impressed me as a man to be trusted. My father thought the same; because he said to me on the way home, that if he had to make a change of overseers for any reason, he believed that Scotchman was the chap for the job.”
“That was a year or more ago, Frank?”