“He goes, too. You see, Mr. Robles needs a crackerjack cook, now I’ll be boarding with him,” Munson laughed, gaily. “You don’t happen to have a porterhouse steak about the place, Buck?” “I can heat you up a can of pork and beans.” “Nothing doing! Jack and I wouldn’t spoil our appetites with such truck as that. We’re going to set up a chicken dinner in Bakersfield.” “Chicken and champagne,” chimed in Jack, as he swung the sack over his shoulder. “You’re beginning to get big bugs these days,” called out the storekeeper as the young men left the room. “Guess, Tom,” he went on, turning to the sheriff, “we could do with a jolt of Kentucky.” “Make it a bottle of bourbon,” gurgled Tom, “to remind us of our absent friend.” “Dear old Pierre,” murmured Buck, as he fumbled in his pocket for the key of the safe, his eyes glued all the time on the two little heaps of gold. CHAPTER XXII—Underqround Wonders Dick Willoughby was in a way happy in his retreat. At first he had been inclined to regret the jail delivery—it might have been the manlier part to have faced the music and cleared his name before the whole world. But then he reflected on the uncertainties of a trial, the cases of innocent men having suffered because of damning circumstantial evidence piled up against them, the vindictiveness of Ben Thurston and the undoubted power of his money to press the criminal charge by every unscrupulous means. So Dick soon came round to the belief that he might be safer for the time being in the guardianship of the White Wolf than at the mercy of a fallible jury. Then there was Merle Farnsworth to consider. Yes; to have brought her into a public court, to have allowed her to plead for him by telling the story of Marshall Thurston’s loathsome advances—that was a thing that could never have been tolerated. The leader of the jail-breaking gang had been right; Dick owed it to Merle to save her from such a cruel ordeal. Finally Dick’s contentment over his change of quarters was completed when Pierre Luzon appeared with a superb equipment of drawing instruments and materials. There was no time to worry now over surmises as to the wisdom of this course or the other course. Work lay to his hand—work of the most absorbing and delightful kind; and with all the ambitious enthusiasm of his temperament he tackled it whole-heartedly there and then. Hour after hour, day after day, Pierre watched in contemplative silence the methodical advancement of the task to which the young architect had applied himself.