“It all had to come in by the lower route, lad. It’s over a hundred miles more than this way around. But they had to do it, for there ain’t no other way to reach Gold Hill—that is, by wagon.”
The crowd had walked away from the station and now came back to find the place deserted and locked up.
“No more trains to stop here until nine o’clock to-morrow morning,” announced Hank Butts, as he untied the two horses and offered one of the steeds to Tom Rover. “Each of us might carry one of the boys, but I don’t see how we could carry two,” he went on.
“We’ll go over to the store and see what we can do,” answered the twins’ father, and with the boys walking and the men riding they soon reached the general store which the miner had indicated. Here the last of the customers had departed, and the proprietor sat in an easy chair dozing with his pipe hanging from the corner of his mouth.
“Sure! I can give you a shakedown for the night if you want it,” said Gus Terwilliger, after the situation had been explained to him. “Or, if you want it, I may be able to fit you out with horses.”
“Didn’t know you had so many animals, Gus!” exclaimed Butts, in surprise.
“Oh, a general store like this has got to keep everything,” answered the storekeeper, with a grin, and then went on to explain that six cowboys had gone away on a vacation and had left their steeds in his care.
“They said I could hire ’em out to any responsible parties that came along,” went on Gus Terwilliger. “They’d be mighty glad to get a little money out of the beasts instead of having ’em eat their heads off in my corral. Cowboys ain’t any too wealthy, you know.”
The quarters the storekeeper had to offer were clean and fairly comfortable, and after another talk with Hank Butts Tom Rover decided to stay at Maporah over night.
“If we went over to Gold Hill with you it might only make more trouble for you,” he explained to the old miner. “You had better go back and say nothing about having seen me. We can ride over to-morrow just as well as not. But I’m going to depend on you as a friend, Butts,” he added, taking the old miner by the hand. “And if you hear of anything worth knowing, don’t fail to let me know about it and at once.”