"You'd only scare them.

They know Koswell and Larkspur well enough.

Don't say anything." And so the matter was dropped.
Two days later came a special delivery letter from home that filled the three boys with intense interest.
"Josiah Crabtree and Tad Sobber have at last shown their hand," wrote Mr.Anderson Rover.

"They have sent an unsigned communication to me demanding fifty thousand dollars.

They give me just two weeks in which to get the money together in cash and place it at a certain spot along the road between our home and Oak Run.