"They're having a powwow now. All talking with their hands, the way greasers do. Go to it, boys. A regular debating society, ain't you?"
"Hello! What's that mean?" broke in Gordon.
One of the Mexicans had left the rest, and was running toward the Corbett house.
"Gone to find whether we're on the porch with the family, up there," continued the young man, answering his own question.
"What's the matter with beating it while we've got a chanct?"
"I'm going to stay right here. You can go if you like, Steve?"
"Oh, well. I just suggested it." Davis helped himself to a chew of tobacco placidly.
"Fellow coming back from the house already," he presently added.
"Got the wrong address again. They'll be happening on the right one pretty soon."
"Soon as they're amply satisfied we ain't under the beds, or hid between the covers of some of them magazines. Blamed if they ain't lit a lamp."
Gordon gave a sudden exclamation of dismay. A Mexican had appeared at the back door of the cottage with a tin box in his hand.
"I'm the blamedest idiot out of an asylum," he cried bitterly. "All the proofs of my claim are in that box. You know I brought it back from Santa Fé with me."
"Ain't that too bad?"
Gordon rose, the lines of his mouth set fast and hard.
"I'm going down after it. If I lose those papers, the whole game's spoilt for me. I've got to have them, and I'm going to."
"Don't be a goat. How can you take it from a whole company of them?"
"I'll watch my chance. It may be the fellow will hide it somewhere till he wants it again."
"I'm going, too, then."
"See here, Steve. Be sensible. If we both go down, it's a sure thing they will stumble on us."
"Too late, anyhow. They're coming up after us."
"So much the better. We'll cut across to the left, slip down, and take them in the rear. Likely as not we'll find it there."
"All right. Whatever you say, Dick."
They slipped away into the semi-darkness, taking advantage of every bit of cover they could find. Not until they were a long stone's throw from the trail did the young miner begin the descent.
Occasionally they could hear voices over to the right as they silently slipped down. It was no easy thing to negotiate that stiff mountainside in the darkness, where a slip would have sent one of them rolling down into the sharp rock-slide beneath. Presently they came to a rockrim, a sheer descent of twenty-five feet down the perpendicular face of a cliff.