and bolt in it will be worth its weight in coin by the time they've got it
in there. All we got to do is to cop off a piston and a valve or two and
this army man will be willin' to pay several hundred dollars to get 'em
back rather than wait for months to get 'em in from the outside."

"Well," replied Rae, "ye know that stealin' up in this country is bigger
crime than murder, and they don't fool with the courts much."

"Aw, this ain't stealin'," sneered Dublin, "it's only kidnappin' and
holdin' for ransom. I know just whereabouts in the hold this stuff was
stored at Seattle, and that kid, Monkey, of yours, can get at it in ten
minutes if he has the nerve. The stuff is not a hundred feet from us, and
I can show him tonight how to do it."

Rae, who was more or less of a coward, made further protest, but finally
yielded, and the pair slipped out of the passageway and walked away still
discussing the proposed scheme. Jack, glad to be released from the rather
odorous confinement of the bunk into which he had crowded himself, left
the third-class quarters and made for the upper deck.

His newspaper training, of which he had received a considerable amount in
the intervals of his school days in the office of his father's paper in
Creston, included an acute sense of analysis, and he at once arrived at
the opinion that the conspiracy he had heard referred to the freight which
Colonel Snow was taking North, and his first impulse was to lay the matter
before him for such action as he might see fit to take.

Then a foolish ambition to handle the thing alone, born possibly of that
newspaper desire to bring off a "scoop" as an exclusive publication is
called, coupled with the usual boyish longing to become a hero, incited
him to circumvent the plot singlehanded and alone, prevented him from
speaking to either the leader of the party or his chums. In addition, his
journalistic training had instilled deeply one of the first rules of the
profession, accuracy, and to tell the truth he was rather ashamed to go to
Colonel Snow with so little evidence to back up his story, and so he
determined to "keep tabs," as he called it, on Monkey Rae, and knowing he
could handle that young man physically to capture him redhanded and take
him in dramatic fashion before the Captain.

Jack had no doubt that Dublin would carry out any scheme he had in mind at
the first opportunity, and that the attempt to get into the hold would be
made at a hatchway o