CHAPTER XXIX

THE RATS COME

Tom took a firm grip of Cliff, on one side, and of Nick, on the other; to the latter he whispered: “Here they come! If you make a false move I’ll make mince-meat of you!”

“I won’t,” agreed Nicky.

Black night had descended over the Dead Hope mine and its new neighbor, the Golden Sun. The two new partners of that latest venture had hastily taken their few belongings from the Dead Hope shack when Henry learned from Tom that it would be needed for gold-dust storage that night.

To all appearances the shack, standing dark and still, and the hillside behind it, were wrapped in slumber.

Two dull figures, as quiet as ghosts, slipped along in the gloomiest parts of the shadow, close to brush, hugging the cliff, or slinking under the shack windows.

“Seems like nobody’s around, seems like,” Mort whispered. “Ain’t that sort of funny?”

“There was a guard,” Henry said in his hoarse, but subdued rumble. “He ain’t around—’Cause why? ’Cause Henry attends to everything. He was leaning out the window when I sneaked around the side of the shack first time, spying. Well—there’s his hat.” He kicked the sombrero lying on the ground under the window.

“Blackjack, heh?”

“Naw. Cudgel!”

“Oh.”

“Now the main thing is not to wake up the camp,” Henry said. “Last time we played bandits we come with guns and a gang at our backs. But this time it’s different. ’Cause we are workin’ alone and I mean to see that you don’t get the best of me this time.”

“Seems like you never will get over that idear, seems like,” Mort grunted. “I tell you and tell you—I had the little gal to watch out for and I tried to find you but the others was too close behind me——”

“Well, it’s all come back to us, anyhow, except what you wasted in Colon—one sack was all you took, wasn’t it?”

“Only one, Hen. Yes, it’s come back. Now we’d better get it and get the papers out from where the stove used to be——”

“And we was pulling up boards in the wrong place. That’s kids for you—she remembers where she hid stuff and her brother tells us as nice as pie and never plans to bother to look. Thinks his sister has forgot—like that silly old codger, Jack, we saw down to Porto Bello!”

“Yep! Well, Hen, let’s get in through the window—or will you let me hand you the sacks and you take ’em to where we got the burros tied?”

“We’ll work right together,” Henry declared. “Here, you get in there and I’ll be right behind you. Watch. Go easy. Don’t come down hard onto the guard—I hit him and he dropped inward—don’t step on ’im if you can help it!”

“I won’t—but they ain’t any guard here.”

“Maybe he crawled off from under the window. Get in—let me get there after you. Hurry, you slow poke.”

Mort hastened all his fat bulk would permit. Then Henry got in.

“That’s strange,” he said. “I was sure the guard fell in the room when I poked the cudgel down onto his fat head! But, he must of come to life and crawled off. Don’t hear nothing so he hasn’t sounded any alarm!”

“Got the flashlight? Turn it this way.”

Henry unslung a small pocket lamp and switched on its beam. Throwing it over the room he gave an exclamation of delight.

“There’s them sacks o’ dust—and some of nuggets, by the feel.”

They lost no time in dragging some of the buckskin pouches from the top of the pile and dropping them out of the window so they could get to the bulkier flour sacks and gunny sacks beneath them. When they had lifted until they were tired, they decided to transfer what they had dropped under the window to the backs of the mules.

“But wait!” admonished Mort. “Seems like we better get at the papers, seems like. Then, if we’re chased, we know we haven’t left that partnership agreement and deed for the kids to find.”

“Wise idea,” agreed Henry. “Take this flash, and put it so’s it can’t be noticed outside. Then I’ll pry up the boards—let’s see—a girl of nine or ten or so would never have tools—and she was excited when you come in, wasn’t she, Mort?”

“Seems like she was, way I remember.”

“Now, the stove was about here—yep, here’s the spots where the heat warped the wooden floor. Now—Mort, where was the little gal standing that night when you come in?”

“Well as I recall—I come in the door, and she was—just about like you are now.”

“Well, that settles it. She had just straightened up, I bet. ’Cause why? Look at that board along the wall. Loose, I’ll bet. See! A kid could get her fingers almost under the edge—enough to lift it—and sure enough! Here they are!”

He wrenched savagely at the long, narrow board, and lifted it enough to get his arm through and fish out some mouldy looking paper.

“Take care,” warned Mort. “It’s nearly falling to bits.”

“Only the outer wrappers,” Henry whispered, holding the papers close to the electric beam, already growing dim. “See—the inside papers are all right.”

“Well, hurry up and make sure what they are. We want the deed and we might as well take the others and tear ’em up where the pieces won’t get us in trouble. Hurry, though. The battery is going down on that flashlamp.”

“It’s the deed all right,” Mort took one paper and unfolded it partly. “I recall how this corner was tore off where it was signed, and I made a patch onto it—only with my name instead of—that other ’un.”

“And here is the partnership paper. I won’t tear it up yet—but what are these other things?”

“Maybe more of his deeds,” Mort said. “You know, the night you was chief of the bandits and I helped, you said we ought to find more deeds for mines because he was representin’ a company——”

“Well, if you hadn’t shot him!—” accused Henry.

“I shot him? You got rats! You done that!”

“Well, look at the papers and let’s go back to toting gold.”

Henry, with the flash bulb now merely a dim, yellowish filament, held a paper close to his eyes.

“What’s this?” he almost forgot his caution.

“Well, what is it?”

“‘I—Henry Morgan—do confess,’” he began, then flung aside the paper and opened the last one feverishly.

Meanwhile Mort strained his eyes at the first, but Henry, snatching the lamp and using it, snarled.

“It’s got all about you being a bandit and shooting the gringoes—“(Americans)—“and lots more, Henry.”

“Well, this confession is about you and how you stole from me and your pals and hid the gold dust and took the little girl.”

“Well—what of it? Who put them there?”

“We did!” snapped a sharp voice.

“And you might as well sign the confessions!” said another.

Whirling, dazzled by two vivid white beams cast on them from large flashlamps protruding through the window, the two, caught red-handed, blinked and stammered in amazement.

“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!”

Eagerly Tom grasped the deed to the Golden Sun, transferred, supposedly, to one Morton Beecher. From Jack’s worn, faded wallet he fitted to its patched corner a bit of paper, yellow and mildewed, but an exact fit!

“So Margery and I will have you for a half-partner instead of that—” Tom made a face toward Mort who was being led, with head bent, toward his imprisonment and trial, with Henry, for their many sins.

“Bill,” cried Jack. “Tell you what I’ll do. You always liked mining and you say you used to prospect in Peru for mines. How about trading my share in this Golden Sun for your ranch in Colorado?”

“It’s a go!” said Bill.

“And our old Bill will be our partner,” chuckled Tom. “I’m glad.”

“And we’ll take Cliff and Nicky into partnership, too, won’t we?” Margery pleaded.

“As to that!” exclaimed Tom, with a grand air, and waving a hand like an orator, while he stuck the other arm into the bosom of his coat, “I believe we shall have to take that up with the board of directors—in the morning.”

“In the morning, my dear!”