"Well, boy, we will have to give it up," said the conductor to Jim, when the train started once more.
"It seems so," admitted Jim quietly.
It was hard for him to accept defeat, in this very first skirmish with his old enemy, Bill Broome, and harder still to lose his treasure that was to be the sinews of war in the campaign that had already opened. But Jim soon pulled himself together with rugged determination.
"If I remember right, old Broome gave us a jolly good licking to start with, when he captured us in the canyon in the coast range," mused Jim to himself, "and we beat him in the end."
But the reader is probably asking about the "Mysterious Mexican or Where Did He Go To." Well, friend, I will tell you in confidence that Mr. Mexican was in the train all the time. Perhaps the ingenious reader has already solved the problem of the Mexican's escape, but for those who do not care to be bothered, I will relate what happened, and where he was located.
When he slipped through the door of the sleeping car, which his confederate, the negro, locked after him, he glided through several coaches, where the occupants were all soundly and some loudly asleep, until he came to the forward car which carried a number of emigrants, on their way to the coast.
It must be remembered that the Mexican was a dwarf, no larger than a child. It was easy for him to reach one of the long brass brackets above one of the rear seats, intended for bundles often heavier than he was; here he curled up in his heavy coat, for all the world like one of the bundles belonging to an emigrant and thus escaped detection.