and not a sniff of gas to
show for it. I'm through!"

"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