"That's the other side of the picture," remarked Randy. "Evidently he's got rid of every cent he had, and now he's so downhearted he is taking to drink." "I don't see where he can get it in these days," said Fred. "Oh, they manage to get it somehow." The moving picture theater was open, and a crowd was swarming inside. The pictures were old and of a wild Western nature, and none of the lads had any desire to see them. They passed on and looked into the windows of a couple of the general stores, where everything from matches to bedding seemed to be for sale. Then they came to a corner where there was a side street which was little more than an alleyway. Along this were a dozen or more shanties set in anything but a regular row. On the corner was a flaring banner announcing that here was located the Famous California Chop Suey Restaurant. Behind the small dirty windows ten or fifteen men were eating at half a dozen tables covered with oilcloth. "Look!" exclaimed Fred, pointing in through the open door of the restaurant. "There are those same men who were at our hotel. Evidently they can't be stopping there--or at least they don't eat there." "Isn't it queer that they should hang around our hotel and then come down here for a meal?" remarked Randy. "They're talking to another man--somebody who wasn't at our hotel," said Fred. "Just see how excited they seem to be!" he added quickly, after one of the men drew a paper from his pocket and all of them bent over it with interest. Then the stranger of the crowd began to talk to the others very earnestly. "Let us walk down the alleyway, and perhaps we can find out something about those men," suggested Jack. "You say they asked about Lorimer Spell and his claim? They may know something that my dad would like to find out." "All right," said Fred. The four Rovers turned the corner of the restaurant and walked slowly down the alleyway along a narrow cinder path. This path ran close to the side of the building, and here were located several small windows, one of them close to where stood the table at which the men inside were seated. "It's a mighty good thing that we ran across those Rovers the very day they came in," one of the men was saying. "If it hadn't been for that they might have gone up to the Lorimer Spell claim and done something that would queer the whole thing." "Oh, I don't think they could do that, Tate," returned the man whom the lads had not seen before. "You know at the best Spell's claim on the land was not perfectly clear." "Well, that's how you look at it, Davenport," said another of the men. "You must remember, Lorimer Spell had a good many friends in this neighborhood. Of course he was a queer Dick and all that sort of thing, but in spite of that folks here would want to have Spell's wishes in this matter upheld." "Oh, I know we run some risk," returned the man called Davenport. "But I think the stake is worth it." "To be sure it is!" came from one of the others.