On the following morning Tom and Sam arrived, as anxious as Dick had been to learn the particulars of what had occurred. They listened to their father's story with interest, as he told of how he had heard a noise and gone below to grapple with the midnight intruder who was ransacking the library desk, and of how Randolph Rover had come to his assistance and been seriously wounded, and how all were now certain that the unwelcome visitor had been Arnold Baxter--that is, all but Randolph Baxter, who lay semi-unconscious, in a high fever, and who knew nothing. The doctor came in at noon, and pronounced Randolph Rover but little better. "He must be kept very quiet," said the medical man. "Do not allow anybody to disturb him. If he should become in the least excited I would not answer for his life." So the boys kept away from his bed-chamber and walked about on tiptoes and spoke in whispers. It was Dick who called together a council of war, out in the barn, late in the afternoon, after he had had another long talk with his father. "Here's the whole thing in a nutshell," he said. "Arnold Baxter has those papers--or the best part of them--and he means to stake that claim if he can." "But he won't dare to show himself," said Sam. "If he does, we can turn him over to the police." "Of course he won't show himself, but he'll get somebody else to stake the claim and whack up," replied Dick. "We won't let him do it," interposed Tom bluntly. "I'll go to Colorado myself and stop him." "Good for you, Tom! You've struck the nail's head first clip," said his elder brother. "Father was going out there this spring, anyway--and he was going to take us." "True. Father would go to-day if he could, but he can't, on account of that hurt ankle," went on Dick. "Then let us go for him," came from Sam. "We can do nothing here but worry Uncle Randolph, and I don't feel like going back to Putnam Hall while this excitement is on." "I told father that I wanted to go, lout he is afraid the trip would be too dangerous." "Pooh! we went to Africa," was Tom's comment. He was awfully proud of that trip to the Dark Continent. "It isn't the trip so much as it is the fact that we may fall in with Arnold Baxter and his confederates." "By the way, I wonder if Dan has joined his father?" mused Sam. "Like as not. Certainly Dan knew what his parent was up to--sotherwise he wouldn't have written that letter Josiah Crabtree dropped." "Then you can be sure the two Baxters have gone to Colorado," said Tom. "And the three Rovers will go, too," said Sam. "Will you?" asked Dick. "I wanted to say so, but--" "Yes, we'll go, and that settles it," cried Tom. "And the sooner we get off the better. But we must get father to explain everything a little more closely before we leave."