"No; stay back, old fellow!" Jack exclaimed. The pony, whinnying, obeyed.
Jack noticed that one of the mail bags was hanging loose, as if about to
fall, but he reasoned that he could fasten that securely after he had
learned whether or not the white object was the package missing from his
pocket.

Cautiously he approached, and there, lying on the very verge of one of the
openings made by the missing planks, was the packet, which Jack was sure
contained jewelry, if not money.

"Well, if this isn't lucky!" he cried, as he picked it up, and thrust it
into the bottom of his inside vest pocket. "Just pure luck! You won't get
out again," he added, patting the package.

It was the work of but a few minutes to drag from the nearby woods some big
branches to fill in the holes left by the missing planks. Of course, the
branches did not make the bridge secure, but they could easily be seen,
even after the moon went down, and would warn chance passersby of the
danger. There was a chance that some one might come after Jack passed,
though the pony express trail was one not often followed after nightfall.

Jack tried to ascertain by careful looking how the planks had come to give
way under the hoofs of his steed. But there was no clew that he could
discover. The bridge was not a carefully made one, and it would have been
an easy matter for any one to so loosen a couple of the planks that the
least motion would send them into the stream below.

"But who would want to do a thing like that?" Jack reasoned. "I might have
been killed, and so might Sunger. Well, all's well that ends well, I guess.