The good luck of the Rover boys in escaping from the cave and falling in with the man who had guided them to the Corning place was followed directly after breakfast by more good luck. Two cowboys and six miners, including Lew Billings and Hank Butts, came riding by the place and were immediately halted and told what was in the air. These men at once agreed to join the others in an attempt to bring Davenport and his cohorts to justice.
“I want to go along,” said Jack to his father when the posse was ready to start, and the other lads echoed that sentiment, and somewhat against the wishes of their parents the four boys joined the men in the hunt for the rascals.
The round-up lasted until sundown, when Davenport, Tate and Jackson were located by part of the crowd under Dick Rover. Several shots were exchanged and Davenport received a slight wound in the shoulder. Then the three men held up their hands in token of surrender.
In the meantime the boys and some of the other men managed to catch Digby and Booster. The young man who had so imposed upon the lads in New York and Chicago did his best to get away and then tried to show fight. But Jack promptly knocked him down by a smashing blow on the jaw, and when Booster got up again Randy hit him in the ear and Fred got behind him so that when Andy gave the fellow a shove he went down flat on his back with a thud. Then he was captured and his hands were bound tightly behind him.
“I don’t think you’ll play any more confidence games in a hurry,” said Jack. And he was right, for as a result of his participation in the plot against the boys, Joe Booster, as well as Digby, was sent to prison for a number of years.
Davenport, Tate and Jackson looked much crestfallen when confronted by the lads and their fathers. They were fearful of being lynched, knowing that some of the miners and cowboys might be in favor of such a proceeding. They were glad when the sheriff was called and they were taken off to the county jail. They, too, were sentenced to prison for long terms.
From Ocker Tom Rover was able to gain much information regarding Peter Garrish and his method of running the Rolling Thunder mine. As a result of this and the action of Tom and several of the other large stockholders Garrish was compelled to cancel a contract he had made with the ore company in which he and his friends were interested and was likewise made to surrender some stock which he had appropriated. Then he was allowed to retire, a poorer if not a wiser man.
Because of what he had done for the boys and for Tom, Ocker was not prosecuted. Instead, the Rovers gave him sufficient money to buy his passage to the gold fields of Alaska where, they hoped, he would turn over a new leaf and make a real man of himself.
“Well, they didn’t get that hundred and fifty thousand dollars after all!” chuckled Randy after the rascals had been rounded up and the boys were safe once more at Cal Corning’s house.
“No, they didn’t get it,” answered his father. “Just the same, we were ready to pay it in case we couldn’t get any trace of you.”