CHAPTER III.—CAPTAIN JOE’S MESSAGE.
Deputy King stepped over to the deck rail and looked down at the rowboat in which he had left the shore. It held five men, all dusky, uncouth looking fellows, with greasy hair and black, suspicious eyes. One of the men had left the shore with the deputy, two had been picked up in the river on the way out, and two more had been taken in when the rowboat came closer to the Rambler.
These last two were the ones who had been working the motor boat toward the shore by diving and lifting the anchor and putting it over. As the craft always swung over to the new anchorage, she had gained the shore by just the distance the anchor had been moved.
It was known afterward that the men had been sent out to board the motor boat and bring her in, but that they feared armed opposition from concealed occupants, and so resorted to the slower but safer, if laborious, method described. When King looked down upon the boat all five occupants were actively engaged in getting under way, four handling oars and the fifth at the helm. They were already a couple of yards from the motor boat.
“Here!” cried King. “Come back with that boat! What are you doing? That firing doesn’t mean anything to you! Come back!”
The five men laughed insolently, and one of them made significant and insulting gestures with a thumb at his nose! The boat shot swiftly toward the shore, leaving King fuming on the deck of the Rambler.
“Nothing stays put in the vicinity of the Rambler!” laughed Clay. “I reckon those are Mexicans, and that they are frightened at the firing.”
“They are Mexicans, sure enough!” King replied. “But they are not running away from the shooting. They are going to it!”
“Not going to fight for the fun of it?” asked Case.
“They are deserting me and going back to their friends,” King said. “They now hope to capture the boy without my help, and so get all of the reward, as well as running off with the good money I paid them to assist me! I presume they think the men over in the mountain spur have found the boy and are shooting at him. Why, he’s so small they’d have to use a telescope to see him at that distance! Anyway, I’m done for, with this desertion, and may as well take passage with you to Yuma.”