"Chance?" repeated Chub dully, lifting his hopeless, freckled face to Matt's.
"Yes. You've got two location notices. Fill 'em out. Tack one on that board in place of the one you just pulled down, and we'll hustle the other one to the recorder's office in Phœnix."
"It's too late, I tell you!" insisted Chub. "Don't you understand what's been done? Jacks tacked his own notice up, and Perry is already on the way to Phœnix with a duplicate."
"Perry hadn't started, up to the time we got here," pursued Matt quickly. "If he had started, he'd have had to pass us. But suppose he did; suppose he has two hours the start of us—why, he's riding a horse that has already done twenty-five miles to-day, and a motor-cycle can beat him out!"
Matt's hopefulness and splendid confidence electrified Chub.
"You're a chum worth having if any one asks you," he burst out. "You're right, Matt; there is a chance yet, and this is no time to pull off any baby-act. I was rattled, that's all. The idea that a fortune had side-stepped the McReadys had got onto my nerves. Give me a pencil. Hanged if I don't jump dad's claim myself, just to save it from Jacks and Hawley."
Chub was now all energy and determination. Sitting down on the rocks once more, he took two folded blanks from his pocket and laid them over a smooth, flat stone in front of him.
"We'll call this claim the 'Make or Break,'" he went on, taking the pencil from Matt and beginning to fill in the blank spaces; "it's in the Winnifred Mining District, and it's located by Mark McReady."
"Hold up, Chub," interposed Matt, "before you write your name down as the locator. You're several years this side of twenty-one. Would that make any difference?"
"It might," said Chub thoughtfully. "It'll be safer to put in dad's name, and then we'll be sure not to get stung. I'll fill out the two of them; then, while I'm tacking one to the board, you can take the other and make a getaway for Phœnix."