"That fixes Black Pepper!" declared Bart Dawson, with satisfaction. "Now come on back to the cabin and tell us all about it. I'm just about dyin' of curiosity."
Dawson and the Hardy boys left the jail and had to fight their way through the crowd that surged about the doorway. Questions were hurled at them as they started up the street. Was it true that Black Pepper had been captured at last? Who caught him? What was he in for? How did it all happen, anyway?
"Tell ye all to-morrow," promised Bart Dawson, leading the boys on up the hill. "I'm not very clear about it just yet, myself."
So the Hardy boys returned to Hank Shale's cabin on the hill, there to tell the tale of their hazardous adventures and the successful outcome of their search for the hidden gold.
CHAPTER XXIV
Bart Dawson Explains
Sitting beside the fire in Hank Shale's cabin, the Hardy boys told their story. They were interrupted frequently by ejaculations of "Ye don't say!" and, "Well I'll be switched!" from the two old miners, and occasionally their father smiled in approval.
When they had finished, Bart Dawson slapped his knee.
"I never heard the beat of it!" he declared. "Ye went up on that there mountain and got lost and attacked by wolves and fell down the shaft and got held up by Black Pepper, and yet here ye are, and there's the gold. I never heard the beat!"