"That's my idea exactly," said Nat, "I'm pretty sure that now they are aware that we know the location of their fort that they'll try to get after us in every way they can."
"Right you are, boy. Their very existence in these mountains depends on their checkmating us some way. I think the sooner we get out of here the better."
"How soon can we get to the mine?" asked Nat.
Nat dipped down into his pocket and drew out his folder map of the Sierra region. It was necessarily imperfect, but Cal, after much cogitation, darted down his thumb on a point some distance to the northwest of where they were camped.
"It's about thar," he declared, "right in that thar canyon."
"With luck, in two days, I should say. We can camp there while one of us rides off and gets the sheriff and a posse. I tell you it'll be a big feather in our caps to land those fellows where they belong. The scallywags have made themselves the terror of this region for a long time."
"Well, don't let's holler till we're out of the wood," advised Nat.
By this time the auto was ready and the others awaited their coming with some impatience.
"Are we all right?" asked Nat looking back at the tonneau and then casting a comprehensive eye about. Bismark, hitched behind as usual, was snorting impatiently and pawing the ground in quite a fiery manner.
Nat threw on the power and off moved the auto, soon leaving behind the camp on the knoll which had been the scene of so many anxieties and amusing incidents.
As they rode along Nat explained to the others the plan of campaign. It was hailed with much joy and Joe and Ding-dong immediately began asking questions. Cal explained that his mine was located in a canyon which had once been the scene of much mining activity, but like many camps in the Sierras, those who once worked it--the argonauts--had long since departed. Only a little graveyard with wooden head-boards on the hill above the camp remained to tell of them. Cal had taken up a claim there in the heyday of the gold workings and from time to time used to visit it and work about the claim a little. He had never gotten much gold out of it, but it yielded him a living, he said.
"I don't like 'em," said Joe briefly, "yellow-skinned, mysterious cusses."