“All right; I’ll say it. I’m about fed up on this thing, and here’s my fling at it. Let’s leave Purdy here with the jacks and dunnage, while you and I go after these fellows and read the riot act to them—tell them they’ve got to quit chasing us around and spying on us or there’ll be trouble.”
Larry shook his head slowly.
“That won’t do, Dick,” he objected. “In the first place, we don’t know where to go to look for them, and in the second, they’d be three to two, and they’d just laugh at us. More than that, we can’t prove anything on them; couldn’t even in a court, unless we could bring the Natrolia storekeeper to testify that they sold him our rifles.”
“Well, we could at least give them fair warning,” Dick persisted; “tell them that we’ll shoot on sight if anybody comes messing around our camp.”
Again Larry shook his head.
“Even at that we’d have the weak end of the thing. This is all wild land, and they’ve got as good a right in any part of it as we have. No; the only thing to do is to go on as we’ve been doing. They won’t interfere with us so long as we don’t find the Golden Spider—and that’s a good bet that they’ll never interfere with us at all.”
“Everything goes,” Dick acquiesced. “But I’ll say this much: if they come monkeying around any time while I’m on watch there’ll be blood on the moon. As I say, I’m fed up. Let’s call it a back number and move on up to that ice cave. To-day’s as good a day as any to do a little exploring among the ‘pretties.’ ... Oh, chortle, if you want to!”—this to Larry. “When you go down in there and see what I saw, you’ll say it’s worth all the trouble.”
It was while they were loading the jacks that Purdick said:
“There’s one thing that we’ve sort of overlooked. If that cripple was spying and listening last night, any time before we turned in, he must have seen us run the test on that piece of gold quartz.”