On the following morning Tom and Sam arrived, as anxious as Dick had been to learn the particulars of what had occurred. They listened to their father's story with interest, as he told of how he had heard a noise and gone below to grapple with the midnight intruder who was ransacking the library desk, and of how Randolph Rover had come to his assistance and been seriously wounded, and how all were now certain that the unwelcome visitor had been Arnold Baxter—that is, all but Randolph Baxter, who lay semi-unconscious, in a high fever, and who knew nothing.
The doctor came in at noon, and pronounced Randolph Rover but little better.
"He must be kept very quiet," said the medical man. "Do not allow anybody to disturb him. If he should become in the least excited I would not answer for his life." So the boys kept away from his bed-chamber and walked about on tiptoes and spoke in whispers.
It was Dick who called together a council of war, out in the barn, late in the afternoon, after he had had another long talk with his father.
"Here's the whole thing in a nutshell," he said. "Arnold Baxter has those papers—or the best part of them—and he means to stake that claim if he can."
"But he won't dare to show himself," said Sam. "If he does, we can turn him over to the police."
"Of course he won't show himself, but he'll get somebody else to stake the claim and whack up," replied Dick.
"We won't let him do it," interposed Tom bluntly. "I'll go to
Colorado myself and stop him."
"Good for you, Tom! You've struck the nail's head first clip," said his elder brother.
"Father was going out there this spring, anyway—and he was going to take us."