"We are, if nothing bobs up to keep us back. I've been trying to start for two or three weeks, but at the last moment I generally run into something that interferes with my plans. Clip has bought Penny's motor-cycle, we've laid out our route, and we want to get away early this afternoon."
"Say," exploded Chub, "if I had a motor-cycle I'm hanged if I wouldn't go with you."
"I've got a picture of you leaving Phœnix now," returned Matt, "while your father is getting to work developing his mine. You'll have to help him, Chub. Where's Susie? I want to say good-by to her before I——"
Matt broke off his words. Fate had already interfered two or three times with his start for Denver, and just then Fate was getting ready to repeat the old performance.
A far-away rattle, growing steadily in volume, broke on the ears of the boys. Whirling around, they stared across the canal and toward the road on the other side of the bridge.
What they saw sent the blood racing through their veins.
Four scrubby cayuses, hitched to a wood-hauler's wagon, were running away. The wagon was nothing more than two pairs of wheels connected by a "reach." As the vehicle leaped and swayed from one side of the road to the other, the startled eyes of the boys made out a small figure clinging to the "reach" for dear life.
"There's a girl on that wagon!" cried Chub breathlessly.
The girl could not have been more than five or six years old, and her dangerous situation appealed to Matt and aroused a swift determination to save her if it could possibly be done.
Without a word, he picked up the rope with which he had dragged Welcome out of the canal and darted for the gate in front of the house. As he ran, his fingers were busy knotting a noose in the rope's end.