He whirled and started through the notch at a brisk pace.
"It's not often," he continued, talking as he strode along, "that a boy makes the hit with me that you have, Matt. You'll find out why as soon as we get to where we're going. How long have you been in this part of the country?"
"A year," replied Matt.
"Where did you come from?"
"Albany, New York."
"I'd have gambled something handsome you were from the East. I'm from New York City, myself, but I've been knocking around these hills for two years. You see," he added, "I'm a close friend of Dangerfield's, and his ideas and mine, about that Chinese Exclusion Act, are identically the same. If this is a free country, how can we keep the Chinks out, any more than the Eskimos, or the Dutch, or any one else that wants to come here? There's a hundred in cold cash for every Chink that's run across the border, and Dangerfield has been smuggling them in in droves. He has the system worked out fine, and there are good, reliable men at every station on his underground line. Juan Morisco is the first of the outfit that ever went wrong."
For a while, Bascomb hurried along in silence; then he commenced talking again.
"I reckon you understand, by now, how well Dangerfield had organized his gang. There wasn't a loop-hole he didn't have watched. Men in Phœnix were looking after McKibben, and the minute Morisco was jugged they knew it; and when Morisco turned traitor and told what he knew, they found that out, too. For more than a year Dangerfield has been doing his work and laughing at the authorities. But things were getting too hot for him, and he was planning to go over into Mexico and go to mining in Sonora. He was ready for the dash across the border when Burke got wind of it and went into camp at Potter's Gap, hoping to head the gang off. Up at Tinaja Wells we knew what he was doing, and if Dangerfield hadn't sent Juan Morisco on a special mission to Phœnix the lot of us would have got away from Burke and he'd never have caught us."
Bascomb fell silent again, and for a mile or more he kept up his steady, swinging gait.