"That's right! Don't it knock you slabsided? Clip! Think of it! I've been on the blink ever since I heard it. Welcome was up early this mornin' and he saw 'em passin' the house, taking Clip to jail. Hogan and Leffingwell, two of McKibben's deputies, had him. And Hogan's arm was in a sling—he'd been shot."
"Not by Clip!" exclaimed Matt, horrified.
"No, but by Pima Pete, one of the Dangerfield gang who was with Clip. Pete got away; and Clip could have got away, too, only he didn't try. That ain't the worst of it, though!" Chub mopped his face with a handkerchief and began fanning himself with his hat. "Great horned toads, Matt, but things have been happenin' so fast I'm fair dazed with 'em all."
"What else has happened, Chub?" demanded Matt, getting up and beginning to scramble into his clothes. "Go ahead. I'll listen while I'm getting dressed."
"You remember what Josh Fresnay, that cowboy, told us," went on Chub, "while we had him on the car racin' away from those stampeding steers? He said he was going to town after ten thousand in gold to meet the Fiddleback pay-roll."
"Yes," put in Matt, with a start, "I remember that."
"Well, Fresnay was robbed, last night. He started for the ranch about nine in the evening, and when he struck the hills, close to the place where we met the stampeded herd, somebody roped him from the roadside and jerked him out of the saddle. He was pretty badly stunned, but he was able to see that there were two who turned the trick. They looked like half-breeds, to him, although it was too dark to see anything very plain. Before Fresnay could untangle the rope, the two robbers had cut his bag of gold from the saddle and made off with it. Fresnay, as soon as he could corral his wits, started back to town. As luck would have it, he met Hogan and Leffingwell, and told them what had happened. They all three started for the place where the robbery had been pulled off, and ran smack into Clip and this Pima Pete; what's more, Clip was lugging a bag containing nine thousand dollars in gold, and Pete had a buckskin pouch with the other thousand. Now, what d'you think o' that!"
Matt was dumfounded. Towel in hand, he turned gaspingly from the wash-stand and stared at Chub.
But Matt knew what had happened. In spite of his advice, Clip had gone with Pima Pete to Dangerfield's cache and dug up the money. Pete had probably needed the thousand to get away with. By an irony of fate, Dangerfield had buried $10,000 in gold—just the amount which had been stolen from Fresnay.
"But it wasn't the same money!" declared Matt.