earched every possible foothold, while Jim stood a short
distance back so that he could see on either side of the train if a
short, dark figure should dart forth to seek escape in the wilds of the
mountains; but their quarry was not flushed into the open, even by the
flare and glare of the torches.

"Well, boy, we will have to give it up," said the conductor to Jim, when
the train started once more.

"It seems so," admitted Jim quietly.

It was hard for him to accept defeat, in this very first skirmish with
his old enemy, Bill Broome, and harder still to lose his treasure that
was to be the sinews of war in the campaign that had already opened. But
Jim soon pulled himself together with rugged determination.

"If I remember right, old Broome gave us a jolly good licking to start
with, when he captured us in the canyon in the coast range," mused Jim
to himself, "and we beat him in the end."

But the reader is probably asking about the "Mysterious Mexican or Where
Did He Go To." Well, friend, I will tell you in confidence that Mr.
Mexican was in the train all the time. Perhaps the ingenious reader has
already solved the problem of the Mexican's escape, but for those who do
not care to be bothered, I will relate what happened, and where he was
located.

When he slipped through the door of the sleeping car, which his
confederate, the negro, locked after him, he glided through several
coaches, where the occupants were all soundly and some loudly asleep,
until he came to the forward car which carried a number of emigrants, on
their way to the coast.

It must be remembered that the Mexican was a dwarf, no larger than a
child. It was easy for him to reach one of the long brass brackets above
one of the rear seats, intended for bundles often heavier than he was;
here he curled up in his heavy coat, for all the world like one of the
bundles belonging to an emigrant and thus escaped detection.

CHAPTER VIII

IN FRISCO

"Well, Jim," said the chief engineer of the _Sea Eagle_, James
Darlington's yacht, "Captain William Broome, able seaman, and all round
pirate, has routed us horse and foot, taken your riches by proxy and the
yacht away from me by his own personal efforts."

"It does look like we were up against it," admitted Jim, "but we have a
fighting chance, and I propose to keep on that old codger's trail."

"Good for you, Jim," said his friend heartily, "but if I had a crew that
had been worth a tinker's c