“Want us to come and tell what we saw?” asked Rick.
“It might be a good plan,” agreed his uncle. “You could give first-hand evidence—both of you. We’ll go right after dinner. You boys have been living on light rations and we’ll have to feed you up a bit.”
Seldom had a meal tasted so good, Rick and Chot thought, as the one Sam set before them a little later, and then Uncle Tod got out the rickety old car that sometimes went and sometimes didn’t. This was one of the times it did, and he and the boys rattled to town in the flivver.
Uncle Tod located a lawyer, to whom the case was explained, and the legal individual agreed that Uncle Tod had a right to Lost River if it could be turned back into the tunnel where it had flowed for many years.
“We’ll go before the judge and get an order for the sheriff to enforce your claim,” said Mr. Pitney, the lawyer. “We’ll have something, then, to back us up.”
The proceedings before the judge were brief. Rick and Chot told what they had seen, Uncle Tod showed his papers and gave testimony. There was a signing of some documents, a visit to the office of the sheriff and a promise made that the following morning a posse of deputies, well armed, would be at the disposal of Uncle Tod to see that the orders of the court were carried out; the orders being that Lost River was to be turned back into its old channel.
“Now we have everything legal and in ship-shape,” said Uncle Tod as he and the boys rattled back to camp.
Sam eagerly awaited their arrival, anxious to hear the news, and when told that the deputies would arrive next morning, and would start for the dam, Mr. Rockford began cleaning his rusty gun.
“Do you think there’ll be a fight?” asked Rick.
“I know it!” was the emphatic answer.