“Well, he would, if his game worked well, and they could force the old medicine man to give up the secret of his hidden treasure,” Billie went on to say in a reflective sort of way. “Goodness knows we’ve heard a heap about the same; and if even one tenth of it is true, he must know where a mighty rich gold vein lies in the heart of this old Sacred Mountain of theirs.” “Still, do you know, I’m not so very much surprised at what you’ve been telling me,” the other chum went on to say. “You sort of had an idea he was up to some dodge like that, didn’t you, Adrian?” Billie asked; for he had fallen into a way of believing that these two wide-awake comrades of his could see through puzzles that bothered him greatly. “He looked like a man who would engineer a big game, and yet I couldn’t seem to get it through my head what sort of a play he could make by luring the chief away with more than half the tribe. Then what I heard about the tremendous pay he offered, which he kept on increasing every new time he talked it over with the head man, made me suspect that he never meant to do the right thing. But honest now, Billie, I never once thought of such a clever scheme as you’ve been telling me about.” “Well, what’ll we do about it?” demanded the fat chum. “Nothing right away, I should think,” replied Adrian, after apparently thinking it all over. “What, not even tell the chief how he’s been taken in and done for; would that be fair and square for us, Adrian?” “There’s no hurry, you see,” answered the other, calmly; “look at the thing without getting excited, Billie, and you’ll agree with me. To-morrow comes the day for all this Zuni ceremony business to reach a head, for they’re going to give the rattlesnake dance then. After that’s once over with we can get the chief to listen, while you tell all you heard. He’d be a fool after that to take any stock in the big offers of money that Braddon is making, to coax him to be an attraction for his Wild West Show, which, between you and me, I never heard of, and don’t believe ever had any existence.” Billie sighed. Perhaps he still thought they should “make hay while the sun shone,” and it may have been that he secretly feared lest the schemer Braddon find some way to get the better of them; so that his path might be cleared, and nothing interfere with the carrying out of his villainous scheme. But then he was so accustomed by now to yielding to the better judgment of his two chums that he did not offer any further objections.