The four others were now clustered around Dick Willoughby. The latter, deputized to do the reading, had nonchalantly taken the epistle from Buck Ashley’s trembling hand. While the others were speaking he had bestowed a preliminary glance, and from his lips there escaped a murmur of surprise.
“Great Caesar!” As he uttered the ejaculation Dick sat up, keenly alert.
“Well, what’s it all about?” inquired Munson, by this time the only cool man in the bunch.
“Read, read!” cried the storekeeper hoarsely.
Dick Willoughby began:
“Mr. Buck Ashley, Storekeeper, Tejon, California.
“If God in His goodness permits this letter to come to your hands, remember it is from old Pierre, the Frenchman, who used to be about your store sometimes a half a day at a time, smoking his pipe. You never knew much about me or where I lived. But I will tell you.
“I am an old man now—very old. I was born in the South of France, came to this country in the ‘40’. and entered into the service of Joaquin Murietta, who was one great man, but a big bandit. Peace to his soul! Well, he was good to me, and I was faithful to him, taking care of the cave, the big grotto, the cavern among the Tehachapi mountains where he many times hid from the sheriff’s posse, and also, where he brought all his gold to stack up and keep from everybody.
“You also know Don Manuel, him whom the people call White Wolf. Well, once when a boy, Don Manuel he save Marietta’s life from the sheriff by helping him to escape from one close place. Murietta was very grateful, and one day he bring the boy to the grotto cave, and there I see him and like him very much. That was while Murietta still lived.
“Afterward when the little boy grow up and was one man, and turned bitter against the gringos because they wrong his sister, Senorita Rosetta, and his old father and mother die of grief, he say to me, ‘I will become a bandit like Joaquin Murietta.’ He came to the cavern one night and tell me and say, ‘You be my servant.’ So I say, ‘All right,’ because Don Manuel one brave man.
“So that night of the great stage robbery over near Lake of Tulare, I hold horses. That’s all I do, but all the same they put me in this horrid prison, and here I am. The other two men, Felix Vasquez and Fox Cassidy, were shot by the posse and I have been told by a Portugee in the jail here about the White Wolf being killed away north in Seattle, and he is no more.
“Don Manuel de Valencia, he was one great man. Peace to his soul!
“I am alone. I want to get away from this terrible prison. I have promised one of my guards—a good Frenchman who comes from my town in France—$5,000 in gold if he can secretly get this letter into postoffice to you and get me away from this living hell. You do this and I show you the cavern. Nobody knows where it is but me.
“Come and get me, please, my good Mr. Ashley, come, and may the spirit of the Virgin Mary reward you. All I say here is truth. You come get me and I show you the secret grotto. I show you the great stacks of gold hidden by Joaquin Murietta and Don Manuel. Also the sand-bar in the hidden stream where Guadalupe gathered up much gold.
“I beg and pray you to keep what I say in this letter secret. I am old and weak and sick. Come and get me.
“Obedient servant,
“Pierre Luzon.”
“Ain’t that just one hell of a letter, boys?” exclaimed Buck Ashley.
“Gospel truth, every word,” cried Tom Baker, emphatically.
“It certainly reads like the truth,” concurred Munson.
“Then what are we going to do about it?” asked Jack Rover.