All those rough and ready men were amazed at Motor Matt's performance. Their interest in the boy and his machine, however, was pushed to the background by their curiosity to learn what sort of a message the governor had sent to Burke.
The sheriff read the message through, then slapped the letter excitedly with the back of his hand.
"Here's a go and no mistake, boys!" he cried. "The governor and McKibben have picked up a hot clue about that Dangerfield outfit. If Motor Matt, here, hadn't got this message through in the time he did, the smugglers would have got away from us."
"How's that, Burke?" asked the man Matt had met in the gap, riding forward and joining the rest of the posse.
"First off," Burke explained, "Juan Morisco has been nabbed in Phœnix. He was getting out of town with a wood-hauler, but he had been acting queer, and McKibben was having him watched. While in Phœnix, Morisco wore a piece of courtplaster on one side of his face. The wood-hauler's team ran away, just as he and Morisco were leaving Phœnix, and, in the excitement of catching it, the courtplaster must have got knocked off Morisco's face. Anyhow, when McKibben saw him after the team was stopped, there was that cross-shaped scar, plain as anything. That was all McKibben needed to see. Morisco was taken to jail, and it was what McKibben got out of him that concerns us."
"What in thunder was Juan Morisco doin' in Phœnix?" queried one of the men. "I thought he was with Dangerfield, an' movin' this way, on the road to Mexico."
"Morisco told McKibben," went on Burke, "that Dangerfield sent him on an important piece of work. He also told McKibben that the smugglers are rounded up at Tinaja Wells, and that they have heard we're waiting for them at Potter's Gap, and that they're going to leave the Wells to-night, give us the slip, and go south by way of the Rio Verde."
This revelation caused a tremendous amount of excitement, all the men talking back and forth.
"How'd Dangerfield ever find out we was layin' fer him here?" asked one.
"The governor don't say anything about that; but Dangerfield must know it, or Morisco wouldn't have been able to tell McKibben. The governor says," proceeded Burke, glancing at the letter which he still held in his hand, "that Morisco tells McKibben Dangerfield is going to leave Tinaja Wells to-night, but that he—the governor, mind you—hopes to get this letter into my hands by five o'clock this afternoon, so we'll have a chance to rush the smugglers at the Wells by daylight." He folded up the letter and shoved it into his pocket. "It's twenty miles to the Wells, my lads, and if we start at once we can make it. Saddle up in a hurry. One of you make my horse ready."