Page:Dave Porter in the Gold Fields.djvu/158

144 Mr. Harrison were warm friends, and, that being so, Blower would be willing to do almost anything for Mr. Harrison's nephew. And Link rushed Blower away in a hurry, so that we wouldn't get at him."

"I wonder if Haskers is with him?" mused Roger.

"I shouldn't wonder. If the mine is found, Link can't claim it, for he would be arrested on sight. But he could let Haskers claim it, and then turn it over to somebody else and thus mix it up, so that you would be out of it," answered Dave.

"What do you think I had best do next?" asked the senator's son. The unexpected turn of affairs had bewildered him almost as much as it had bewildered Mrs. Carmody.

"I don't see what you can do, Roger, excepting to start on a hunt for the Landslide Mine without Blower."

"Yes, let us do that!" cried Phil. "Who knows but that we'll run across Blower and Merwell? And if we do, we can easily prove that Link is a fraud."

"Well, we'll have to get some sort of a guide," answered Roger. "It would be utterly useless for us to start out alone in such a country as this."

"We might ask Mr. Dillon to recommend