after such encounters that the
dead and wounded were carted back to the towns, and their places filled
by men eager for the man-hunt.

And then Jim Hall disappeared. The bloodhounds vainly quested on the
lost trail. Inoffensive ranchers in remote valleys were held up by armed
men and compelled to identify themselves. While the remains of Jim Hall
were discovered on a dozen mountain-sides by greedy claimants for blood-
money.

In the meantime the newspapers were read at Sierra Vista, not so much
with interest as with anxiety. The women were afraid. Judge Scott pooh-
poohed and laughed, but not with reason, for it was in his last days on
the bench that Jim Hall had stood before him and received sentence. And
in open court-room, before all men, Jim Hall had proclaimed that the day
would come when he would wreak vengeance on the Judge that sentenced him.

For once, Jim Hall was right. He was innocent of the crime for which he
was sentenced. It was a case, in the parlance of thieves and police, of
"rail-roading." Jim Hall was being "rail-roaded" to prison for a crime
he had not committed. Because of the two prior convictions against him,
Judge Scott imposed upon him a sentence of fifty years.

Judge Scott did not know all things, and he did not know that he was
party to a police conspiracy, that the evidence was hatched and perjured,
that Jim Hall was guiltless of the crime charged. And Jim Hall, on the
other hand, did not know that Judge Scott was merely ignorant. Jim Hall
believed that the judge knew all about it and was hand in glove with the
police in the perpetration of the monstrous injustice. So it was, when
the doom of fifty years of living death was uttered by Judge Scott, that
Jim Hall, hating all things in the society that misused him, rose up and
raged in the court-room until dragged down by half a dozen of his blue-
coated enemies. To him, Judge Scott was the keystone in the arch of
injustice, and upon Judge Scott he emptied the vials of his wrath and
hurled the threats of his revenge yet to come. Then Jim Hall went to his
living death . . . and escaped.

Of all this White Fang knew nothing. But between him and Alice, the
master's wife, there existed a secret. Each night, after Sierra Vista
had gone to bed, she rose and let in White Fang to sleep in the big hall.
Now White Fang was not a house-dog, nor was he permitted to sleep in the
house; so each morning, early, she slipped down and let h