On they shot, over the desert. It was about an hour since they had left the dry gully where they had picked up the young engineer, and they had covered several miles.
Once Dick halted his machine, while they listened for any sounds of pursuit, but they heard none. If the other car was coming after them it was either following silently, or was so far back that no sound of its motor carried over the desert.
"And so you put water in their gasoline tank?" chuckled Dick, as he recalled what his guest had said.
"Yes, they were both playing 'seven-up,' and disputing over some intricate point, when I just took one of the water cans, and emptied it into the gas tank. I thought I ought to do something after their having taken most of the tricks so far."
"That was all right!" rejoined Dick. "I'd like to see them when they stall."
"Well, really I owed them something like that," went on the young engineer. "They had things their own way long enough. To think how I let them fool me makes me mad! And yet I believed what they told me—that they were in the right—I mean your Uncle Ezra and his friends—and of course as long as I was paid for my legitimate work, I saw nothing wrong in not coming to court to testify, particularly when they said that the other side had been guilty of the same kind of practice.
"But I see their game now. They thought I would never hear the other side. It was the luckiest thing in the world that I stumbled into your camp last night. It was fate. Do you believe in fate?" he asked Dick.
"I certainly do," answered that young man. "That is why I stuck those valuable papers—at least, they were valuable at one time—back of that glass where anyone could see them," and he told of the experiences he and his chums had gone through.
In turn Mr. Cameron related some of his life's story. He was all alone in the world, having been left a small inheritance by his father. He took up the study of civil engineering, and made a success of it.