We rides up and down that road from the ford to Mighty’s place, but we don’t find nothing. We stops at the old Soda Springs trail, which shows fresh tracks. By mutual consent we turns up the trail. About half a mile up the crick we discovers a camp.
We recognizes old “Frenchy” Timmons as the party humped over the fire, tossing flapjacks, so we rides up and greets him. He’s got a couple of moth-eaten burros nosing around his little tent. Frenchy is so crooked that he’s suspicious of himself. He’s one of them kind of prospectors what goes around with the feeling that every man what speaks kindly to him is laying to beat him out of the next strike he makes. He looks up through a decade of whiskers and grunts a greeting.
“How’s your stock of location notices holding out, Frenchy?” asks Muley. “For a man with only two burros you can make more ‘discoveries’ than any sourdough I ever seen.”
“Yah-h-h-h!” gurgles Frenchy, way back in the whiskers. “I find heem sometame, Mooley.”
“You dang well know yuh—yuh sure have, Frenchy. Look!”
Muley points behind Frenchy, and there one end sticking out of the brush, is a wooden box, and the word “DYNAMITE” fairly yelps at us in big letters.
Frenchy turns to see what we’re looking at, and the son-of-a-gun reaches for his six-shooter. He was years too late. Me and Chuck have him covered before he can touch his gun, and he stands there like a lamb, while Muley balances that box in front of him on the saddle-horn.
“Next time yuh better find out who owns things before yuh picks ’em up for yourself,” advises Chuck. “Throw that gun over in the brush! That’s the stuff. Now keep your mouth shut! Sabe?”
Frenchy didn’t say a word, but we can see that he’s a heap annoyed. We strings out down the trail, and when we’re about two hundred yards from the camp, comes a splintering noise, and the report of a big rifle. Me and Chuck throws our broncs off the trail and gets down. We can hear Muley complaining about things, and we asks him why he feels so cross.
“Danged old pelican!” he wails. “That bullet cut the corner off our box!”