"Why?" asked Joe, bringing the whip down lazily on the flanks of the horses.
"Because," Dick answered, "we found his loot, and he knew we had found it. We feared that he'd make another big effort to get back the stuff, which was valuable."
"But the police have the stuff," Joe went on.
"How do you know that?"
"Why, Ripley's crowd knew it when they got back to Gridley, and the newspapers got the fact from the Gridley police."
"If Mr. Fits read the Gridley papers," remarked Prescott, thoughtfully, "then of course he knew he couldn't recover any of his plunder by paying us a visit. That, I guess, was the only reason why he didn't pay the cabin another visit."
"That, and the other fact, perhaps," Joe went on, "that the Gridley papers hinted that the cabin was being shadowed by the police."
"But it wasn't."
"No matter; if your fit throwing gentleman thought he was going to take any chances of running into police out in these woods, then he wasn't going to slip his neck into a noose."
"I'm glad he kept away," muttered Tom Reade.