Lenning certainly had been playing in hard luck. He had started into the hills with the very innocent idea of setting off a blast in the gulch, and fate had played him a scurvy trick by bringing down on him two scoundrels like Shoup and Geohegan. Toward the end of Lenning’s weird experience, however, fortune had smiled, and the plunder secured by the road agents had fallen into his hands.
“You’ve had a pretty tough time of it, Jode,” said Merriwell, his eyes on the mail bags, “but you’ve made a star play in getting back this government property. Great work! There was about one chance in a thousand that these mail pouches would come close enough for you to get a whack at them, but the chance came your way and you made the most of it. Where did Shoup and Geohegan unload the sacks?”
“Across the cañon, a little farther up,” Lenning replied.
“And you toted ’em down here and stowed ’em in a different place so as to hold ’em out on the measly junipers?” asked Blunt, his sloe-black eyes beginning to glow.
“Yes.”
“And, according to your notion, Shoup and Geohegan will surely return for their loot, at which time you, and Chip, and I will make a surround and take a little of the deputy sheriff’s work off his hands?”
“That’s what I was thinking.”
“Bueno! All that makes the biggest kind of a hit with me. Chip, those two curs will certainly come back after
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 the bags, and we can work through the program just as Lenning has chalked it up. It’s a great plan, by thunder!”
“It’s a plan for the deputy sheriff,” said Merriwell, “and he’s the fellow who ought to be on the job. Why didn’t you figure it that way, Jode?” he asked. “Why did you send for Blunt and me, instead of Hawkins?”
Lenning swerved his eyes quickly to Merriwell.
“You understand, don’t you, that I had to have my two best friends?” he asked. “I couldn’t take chances with Hawkins, nor with any one else. Had the deputy sheriff found me here, like this, with both mail bags in my possession, his first move would have been to arrest me for holding up the stage. My record is against me; circumstances are against me. Hawkins would never swallow that yarn I gave you fellows.”
“I reckon that’s correct,” agreed Blunt. “You had to make something of a mystery out of that telephone message to Chip in order to play safe.”
“That’s it,” Lenning nodded. “I only wanted two to come, because two would be enough for my work here. I wanted those two to be my best friends, so they’d take my word as to what had happened. I didn’t want Chip to know who had sent for him, or to tell anybody where he was going, because, if the news got out, some one else who wasn’t so friendly might have taken it into their heads to come to the cañon and interview me. I had to fight shy of that.”
“By glory,” breathed Blunt, “but you’ve sure got a head for plans! You worked through that complicated puzzle with ground to spare.”
“I guess you sabe, all right,” pursued Lenning grimly, “that if you were not friends of mine you’d say right off that I’d told you a cock-and-bull story, and that I was
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 really one of the thieves, but that I had lost my nerve and was trying to pull out of a bad scrape without taking any of the consequences.”
“We’re a good way from thinking that, Jode,” said Merriwell earnestly.
“I’m no end grateful to you for hanging on to your confidence in me. There are others, though, who won’t be so considerate. I can’t go back to Ophir without taking Shoup and Geohegan along. Understand? If I do, I shall be arrested. I’ve figured that all out, and know what I’ve got to do.”
Merriwell and Blunt had not looked at the affair from this angle. They were not slow to perceive that Lenning was right, however. His record, in the matter of the robbery, had to be cleared by the capture of the real robbers, or he would surely be regarded with suspicion himself.
“You’re right, Lenning,” declared Merriwell, his face taking on a resolute cast, “we shall have to capture Shoup and Geohegan. The next question is, how are we to do it? Are you armed?”
“No.”
“Neither are we. Undoubtedly the two road agents are pretty well heeled. There are three of us and only two of them, but, with guns, they’ll have far and away the best of it, unless——”
Merriwell’s voice trailed away into silence and he dropped his head thoughtfully.
“Unless what, pard?” said Blunt.
“Why,” and Frank looked up, “unless we can use a little strategy. If we can engineer a bit of a surprise, perhaps we could capture those fellows before they have a chance to draw their weapons and shoot.”
“Now you’re shouting, Chip!” jubilated the cowboy.
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 “Strategy, that’s the thing. Let’s hatch up something and then slam it at those junipers before they sabe what we’re about.”
This was the idea, and the three lads fell to work on it without delay. They finally concluded that they would watch and listen vigilantly, and when they heard or saw the road agents approaching they would hustle across the cañon to the place where the mail bags had originally been left. There they would hide themselves, leap out on the thieves when they bent to pick up the sacks, and trust to strength, and quickness, and the surprise of the attack to accomplish their p............