Mr. McReady and Chub could not have arrived at a more fitting moment. At no time had Matt done very much worrying on account of McReady, senior, for he had all along believed that the prospector was in no particular danger from Jacks and Bisbee. Those two worthies would go as far as they dared, but they would stop short of any desperate work. Hawley would have seen to that, even if Jacks and Bisbee had allowed their ardor to run away with their judgment.
After the prospector had kissed Susie and shaken hands with Matt and Clip, two more plates were put on the table, and for half an hour those present listened to what had happened to the head of the McReady family.
"I've had a tough time of it, and no mistake," said the prospector. "For the biggest part of my trip it was just the same old scramble through the hills, gopherin' around and horn-spooning nothing that had a speck of color. I was near discouraged, thinking how old a man I was getting to be, and how my family was drifting along and kicking the wolf off the door-step every morning. I started for home, allowing I'd get some kind of a job in town, and chance brought me along that old pack-trail. Knowing about the spring under the peak with the white cross, I went there to camp for the night—and then through sheer accident I struck that blow-out of white quartz with the rock just glittering with yellow specks. It took me half of the next day to locate the lode, and while I was pilin' the monuments I looked up and saw that villain, Jacks.
"I had been running across Jacks frequently, during the trip, and it began to dawn upon me that seeing him so much wasn't altogether a coincidence. Everybody knows that Dirk Hawley grub-stakes him, although why Jacks wanted to trail after such an unsuccessful prospector as I am was a mystery. However, there he was, just at the time I had made my 'strike,' pushing toward me threateningly. He said that it was his claim, and that I had no business piling my monuments on it. I asked him why he hadn't piled his own monuments on the claim, if it was his. He hadn't anything to say to that, but tried to run me off the ground.
"Well, instead of his running me off he got run off himself, and I could see him hanging around at a safe distance, keeping an eye on me. When I got ready to put up my location notice, I was thunderstruck to find that I had lost my bundle of blanks. Jacks, no doubt, had blanks, for they're a prime part of every prospector's equipment, but of course I couldn't expect him to let me have a couple; and if I left the claim and tried to get any, Jacks could tack up a location notice of his own and make a run to Phœnix with a duplicate.
"Chub was the boy I thought of to get me out of that fix, but I didn't even think of him as a possibility until Pedro Morales came along the pack-trail with a couple of burros loaded with mesquit and palo-verde. I stopped the Mexican and made him wait while I took the wrapper off of some candles and wrote that letter; then, scratching out the original address on an old envelope, I wrote Chub's name over it, told Morales where to go to find the boy, and gave him some money and sent him on.
"Then I waited, and watched, and hoped, all the time keeping as wary an eye on Jacks as he was holding on me. I never left the claim once, and I had a good-sized club of ironwood which I was ready to use on the slightest provocation.
"Well, the days passed and Chub didn't come. I was hoping Jacks might go away for a spell and give me a chance to slip over to the Bluebell and flash a wireless message to Phœnix, but the rascal seemed glued to the spot. Finally, one day, Jacks walked over with a white flag. He said he wanted to see if we couldn't compromise, as he called it. I kept my club handy and watched him like a cat as we talked. But the trouble was I didn't do any looking behind me. First thing I knew I was grabbed around the arms from the rear, then Jacks jumped forward, and I found myself in the hands of two men, one of them being Bisbee. Hawley had sent Bisbee out to help Jacks get the better of me. Too late I realized how I had been trapped, but there was nothing I could do.
"The scoundrels tied me hand and foot, loaded me onto Jacks' burro, and took me two miles away to the old Santa Maria shaft. The Santa Maria was abandoned years ago, and Jacks and Bisbee lowered me down to the bottom of the shaft, left a little food and water, and went away. The old ladders had long since decayed and fallen away, so I couldn't have been more of a prisoner if I had found myself behind bars and stone walls. Chub can tell you the rest."
"You bet I can," put in Chub. "If it hadn't been for Matt's plucky getaway from that hole in the rocks, it's a cinch dad would probably have been down in the old shaft yet. When you gave that husky yell, Matt, Jacks and Bisbee thought we had both got away. They rushed off after you, and all I had to do was to hike out. I had time to take Old Baldy, and I set out on a night search for the Santa Maria, as you told me to do. I had a notion where the old mine was, although I didn't know exactly, an' of course night was a bad time to find anything I was so hazy about. But sure I had luck in my jeans. I stumbled on a camp of Mexican wood-cutters, and one of 'em took me to the Santa Maria. I can tell you I was mightily relieved when dad answered me from down in the shaft and said he was all right. The wood-cutter got a rope and we snaked dad out in a brace of shakes. Then we began to scratch gravel for the Bluebell, gettin' there about half an hour after you had left, Matt.