“We’re the Mexican police,” declared one of three men who promptly handcuffed the two dazed culprits.
Tom, Nicky, Cliff, Bill, Jack, Mr. Gray, the mine superintendent—and Margery—everybody was trooping into the doorway and the small room.
“We heard every word they said, we crept right under the window,” Nicky said. He turned to Tom, “and I didn’t make a false move, did I?”
“Not a one,” said Tom. “The only false move was the one these men made trying to get the best of three boys, as they thought.”
“And they can sign those confessions and save you a lot of trouble,” said one of the Mexican officials. Mort looked at Henry and his look was returned—there was nothing else to do so the confessions checking and verifying the duplicity of the two—and worse!—were duly signed.
“But what became of the guard I hit?” asked Henry, when he had been told how they were surrounded all the time they talked and worked, and Tom answered: “Oh, Nicky and I were inside here with a hat and wadded sacks around a broomstick, to seem like a man in sombrero and poncho, leaning out of the window. When you ‘socked’ at them we let the hat drop off and put the rest over in the corner—there they are!”
“You certainly outwitted us,” said Mort, grudging admiration, but compelled to admit defeat.
“And now—” it was Jack, the man who had no memory until he left Porto Bello—“Just wait a bit. Mort Beecher—you that was with me so long in Porto Bello, and I never guessed—listen to this! Who crept in my room in a Colorado camp bunk house and stole my deeds, that I was carrying from one ranch to another—and who, by doing that, ruined my reputation, caused me to leave the State, and made the wreck who ended up on the beach at Porto Bello?”
“How should I know?” demanded the handcuffed Mort, but he shivered.
“You should know by this!” snapped Jack. “Oh, I got my memory back at last, and I can remember as well as anything how a piece was torn off the bottom of one deed, the one you tore taking it out of my bunk! It was my own deed, to my own mine, I had just bought, down in Mexico. You thought the corner of the paper was lost. It wasn’t! It was left in my bunk and I had it in my old wallet down in Porto Bello all the time; only, I had been there so long I didn’t recall anything. But I brought away the wallet and here is that piece of paper with my signature on it!”