CHAPTER XXX 

THE NEW WELL--CONCLUSION 

Carson Davenport was halfway up the steps of the car when Jake Tate and another man hauled him backward to the station platform. 

"They've got him!" exclaimed Jack, as he and his cousins, along with the rest of the gathering crowd, came closer. 

"Hi! Hi! Let me alone!" yelled Davenport. "Don't shoot! What is the meaning of this, anyway?" 

"You know well enough what it means!" bellowed Tate, still clutching him by the arm. "You come back here. You are not going to take that train or any other just yet." 

"And you're not going to carry off that bag, either," put in Jackson, as he wrenched the Gladstone away. 

By this time the crowd completely surrounded Carson Davenport, and the pistols which had been drawn were speedily thrust out of sight. The oil well promoter was pushed in the direction of the little railroad station, and in the midst of this excitement the train pulled out. 

"What's the rumpus about, anyway?" exclaimed one man in the crowd. 

"Never mind what it's about," broke in Tate hastily. "This is our affair." 

"That's right--maybe we had better keep it to ourselves," muttered Jackson. 

"I don't believe in shielding him," cried one man who had chased Davenport and who wore several soldier's medals on his vest. "He's a swindler, and it's best everybody knew it. He was on the point of lighting out for parts unknown with all the money that was put into his oil wells up on the Spell ranch." 
Did the locomotive leave?
the train pulled out. 