"Keep the plans in your head, Barker boy," said Demorest, "for here
are the pack mules and packer." This was quite enough to divert the
impressionable young man, who speedily finished his dressing, as a mule
bearing a large pack-saddle and two enormous saddle-bags or pouches
drove up before the door, led by a muleteer on a small horse. The
transfer of the treasure to the saddle-bags was quickly made by their
united efforts, as the first rays of the sun were beginning to paint
the hillside. Shading his keen eyes with his hand, Stacy stood in the
doorway and handed Demorest the two rifles. Demorest hesitated. "Hadn't
YOU better keep one?" he said, looking in his partner's eyes with his
first challenge of curiosity. The sun seemed to put a humorous twinkle
into Stacy's glance as he returned, "Not much! And you'd better take
my revolver with you, too. I'm feeling a little better now," he said,
looking at the saddlebags, "but I'm not fit to be trusted yet with
carnal weapons. When the other mule comes and is packed I'll overtake
you on the horse."

A little more satisfied, although still wondering and perplexed,
Demorest shouldered one rifle, and with Barker, who was carrying the
other, followed the muleteer and his equipage down the trail. For a
while he was a little ashamed of his part in this unusual spectacle of
two armed men convoying a laden mule in broad daylight, but, luckily,
it was too early for the Bar miners to be going to work, and as the
tunnelmen were now at breakfast the trail was free of wayfarers. At the
point where it crossed the main road Demorest, however, saw Steptoe
and Whiskey Dick emerge from the thicket, apparently in earnest
conversation. Demorest felt his repugnance and half-restrained
suspicions suddenly return. Yet he did not wish to betray them before
Barker, nor was he willing, in case of an emergency, to allow the young