A rifle bullet answered him, but he was down ere it reached him. Once more he sprang up and fired three quick shots straight up into the air, then went down again. This time there was an interval, then the welcome answer—three signal shots—was fired. Hippy got up and waved his hat. He had recognized one member of that party. That member was Sheriff Ford.
“Overland!” shouted Lieutenant Wingate upon getting to his feet.
Sheriff Ford did not recognize him at once, but the party of horsemen rode towards him with rifles at ready, Hippy standing out in the open with hands held up. Sheriff Ford then uttered a shout as he recognized the Overland Rider.
It was a happy meeting—for Hippy Wingate. It took but a moment for explanations. A posse, with two sheriffs, including Ford, and five husky citizens of Gardner, had come out in search of the bandits who had tried to rob the Red Limited, and who were supposed to have held up and robbed another treasure train a week earlier.
On their way to release the Overland party, Hippy confided to Sheriff Ford the discovery of the iron chests secured to the log in the lake.
“I suppose there is a reward for the recovery of the plunder, but if there is, you take it. We don’t want it,” said Hippy.
Sheriff Ford protested, but Hippy said the Overland Riders could not consider accepting a reward under any circumstances. Ford said that in such event, the reward would be shared by the members of the posse, and that, in fact, the reward offered by the express company was the principal motive for the posse coming out to try to accomplish what the Pinkertons had thus far failed to do.
The Overlanders were, after considerable hard work, released from their imprisonment in the cave, and it was then that Ford told them of the fight with the bandits, who, he said, were all members of the Jones Boys’ gang. Of ten bandits, the posse had killed or wounded four. They found two who had been wounded before the arrival of the posse, one of whom, Hippy believed, was the fellow he had shot on the shelf of rock, and took four prisoners, including Mother Jones, the mother of the leaders of the gang. Four bandits had succeeded in escaping.
“Mother Jones!” exclaimed the Overlanders.
As it later developed, it was Mother Jones whose face had so frightened Woo, and which Grace Harlowe had seen reflected in the pool. Mother Jones had done the shooting at the Overlanders, following the Overland party’s discovery of the chests in the lake. It was Mother Jones who had fired at them when they were bombarding the lake with boulders.