“When are you going out after them?” asked Clay.
“I have a company of men forming now,” was the reply. “You boys remain here a few days and you’ll see them brought in. Of course the boys who saw them in the mountains and reported it will get the $5,000 reward offered for locating the robbers. That will help some, eh?” he added, with a smile.
“We can get along without it,” Gran broke in. “I guess Daddy has enough money for us all. He’s spent $10,000 on this man-hunt, but he had to do it, or forever live under the suspicion that he killed the man Stiven and bought himself clear. The only thing for him to do was to follow the murderers and keep with them until he knew that he could convict them. They will never confess. We can introduce in the trial THE CONFESSION OF A PHOTOGRAPH!”
There were many little details which the boys had wondered over set to rights that day, and father and son told many amusing stories of their trip out with the films. Until they had confided the whole story to the Sergeant, they were in danger of arrest.
The Sergeant went out with a dozen men that night, and in two days was back with the prisoners, who confessed to the robbery as soon as they saw their pictures in the group by the campfire. Their “mugs” were already well known to the police, and they knew that the pictures showing them on the scene of the robbery just before it took place would be sufficient to convict them.
“You will have no trouble in getting the $5,000 reward,” the Sergeant said to the boys, as they were getting ready to move on down the Columbia river. “By the time you reach Portland it will be waiting for you.”
It may be as well to state that the money was awaiting them at Portland, and that they at once planned another trip, this one to the Colorado river.
Mr. Miller went back to Chicago with the robbers, and Gran, although his leg was still useless, decided to go on with the boys. The father was to meet them in Portland later. He was a very rich man. Gran always declared that only for that he would have been hanged for the murder of Stiven!
There was sincere regret at parting with Sergeant Wilcox, for he had greatly assisted in straightening Out the tangle. He promised to meet the boys later on, but under what strange circumstances they were to meet again they had no premonition at that time!
And so, once more, the boys were afloat on the Columbia! With minds free from mystery and financial worry, they spent the long summer, up to the first of September, making their way to the Pacific.