to face
before you're done with this crowd!"

While Mr. Beckley, with Anderson's aid, and with sundry others looking
on, carefully counted over the wet, draggled, yet still good contents
of the package thus found, there came a rattle of wheels. Presently two
teamsters from Staretta appeared, with word that they had managed to
bring their teams thus far, but the mud and thickening tree trunks might
prevent their going farther.

"Guess you won't have to go farther, my men," spoke up Mr. Beckley. "Can
we get back to Staretta by night--with a prisoner, and also three more
of our friends who came on before?"

"Sure we can! We've broke such road as there is in comin'." The speaker, a
red-faced, burly looking man, was shaking hands with Nels, for he was one
of the old gravel road workers whom the Longknives had never paid as yet.

"Well then," remarked Beckley to whom all deferred as the leader in their
subsequent proceedings, "we will get a move on at once. I am anxious to
reach town where I can telephone. It is lucky that I changed my mind
and did not go on by rail, when I found that these boys were already
after the prisoner yonder," indicating Murky, "and that the other Auto
Boys, with Mr. Fraley, were going at once in pursuit. I may state here
that, though the clubhouse is gone and Grandall along with it, we have
recovered the twenty thousand dollars. If I know the Longknives Club,
they will now be more than willing to pay all claims against them by those
who trusted them. It was long delayed, yet it could not be helped. I
trust to put all things straight before I leave your hospitable little
town."

Needless to state good, clean Staretta beds were occupied by the
Andersons, the Auto Boys, the golfing man, his servant Daddy O'Lear,
and Chip Slider that night. Even Murky, though guarded in the village
lock-up, had a more comfortable place to sleep than he had enjoyed for
some time. Later, under a warrant duly drawn, charging him with murder
and robbery, he was conveyed to the jail at the county seat to await the
grand jury and the court.

Before Mr. Beckley left, and after he had wired particulars of these
recent events to the Longknives Club, he received by wire the hearty
acquiescence from them in the plan already formulated for the disposition
of the stolen and rescued twenty thousand dollars.

First, there was to be medical aid for Nels Anderson, and a restoration of
the money losses he had sustained in the bu