"Didn't you ever get rattled, Matt?" asked Chub.
"Lots of times, old fellow," laughed Matt.
"Well, if you'd got rattled back there at the break in the road little Reddy McReady would have been raked in too easy for any use. Those two roughs were dead set on getting us. Must be something mighty important ahead of us in Prescott or they wouldn't have tried so hard to hold us back."
"I'm getting more confidence in that first note all the time," declared Matt.
"That's the way I stack up. It was a regular raw blazer of a play, though, the way those fellows came at us. But they'd laid their plans pretty well. Where they missed was in not riding out into the trail ahead of us instead of behind."
"That wasn't a miss," said Matt, "that was a part of their plan. They had taken up the planks across that break in the road, and thought they'd chase us to the chasm and stop us there."
"I'll bet the air is some blue around where those two fellows are now," laughed Chub. "But put me wise to this: How did they know we were intending to go to Prescott on our motor-cycles?"
"That's too many for me, Chub. There's been quite a lot going on in Phœnix that I can't understand. The same Mexican delivered both notes to Mrs. Spooner, and it looks as though the two men who robbed Fresnay had been staying in the town, and at the same place where the fellow who wrote the first note was hanging out."
"If we'd had time to look up that Mexican——"
"Couldn't have found him in a thousand years from Mrs. Spooner's description. If I'd been at home when he brought that second note, he wouldn't have got away until he had told me a few things."