Everyone in Prickly Pear was excited about that gold. But Sheriff Roscoe was just thinking about his job.
He turned to Cleo. "Can you send a telegram to the newspapers? They can print a notice about the gold. I'll go and lock up the sack."
"Sure," Cleo said.
In the sheriff's office, Roscoe put the sack inside the safe. "I'll set a new code for the combination lock," he thought. "I'll use numbers that I won't forget."
He carefully turned the dial to different numbers. "Thirty-six, five, seventeen." Roscoe shut the safe. Click!
He went outside. Cleo was helping a farmer remove a wheel from his wagon. The wheel was broken. It was also stuck.
The farmer hit the wheel with a hammer to loosen it. Roscoe and Cleo pulled. Finally the wheel popped off.
"Thanks!" the farmer said. "I hope the repair shop has a 40-inch wheel."
Cleo turned to Roscoe. "Alright, Sheriff. Let's send that—"
"Oh no!" someone shouted.
"That came from the stable!" Roscoe said.
He and Cleo ran to the stable.
Jake, the stable owner, was upset. "I just got back from breakfast. Two horses are missing!"
Roscoe and Cleo searched everywhere. But the dirt was covered with too many hoofprints. After a couple of hours, they gave up.
Roscoe sighed. "Maybe the horses will come back on their own. Let's send that telegram now."
Fritzy sat down at his telegraph machine. "What should the telegram say, Sheriff?"
"'A sack was found in Prickly Pear,'" Roscoe said. "'Its contents are valuable.'"
Fritzy tapped on the telegraph machine, but nothing happened.
"Hmm," he said. "The machine isn't working. We need to check the line."
They followed the telegraph line outside of town. Roscoe and Cleo rode alongside Fritzy's wagon. Around noon they spotted a wire hanging down from a pole.
Everyone stopped.
"Some of the wires are old," Fritzy said. "They wear out and then break." He ran around to a spool of new wire. "We'll need 16 feet of wire."
Roscoe walked backward, unwinding the wire.
Cleo watched as the wire came off the spool. "Three feet . . . four feet . . . five feet . . ."
Fritzy unloaded his toolbox.
"Fifteen . . . ," Cleo said as the wire came off the spool. "And . . . 16 feet! Stop!"
Fritzy gasped. He was looking at the old wire. "This wire isn't worn out."
Cleo scratched her head. "What does that mean?"
Fritzy frowned. "It means someone cut it to stop us from sending that telegram."
Roscoe nodded. "And it could be anyone in town!"