rew it open and stepped in.

"Holy smoke!" he cried. "What you knockin' down the cook-stove for?"

"'Cause I'm fightin' mad, that's why," returned Mrs. Nitschkan tartly,
"and I sure am glad to see you. I been robbed, that's what. Ain't that
so, Marthy?"

Mrs. Thomas lifted her tear-stained face and corroborated this with
mournful nods.

"Whilst I was takin' a little nap," went on Mrs. Nitschkan excitedly, "a
rascal brother of Gallito's who shouldn't never have been let out of
jail cut the pocket clean out of my skirt and stole my roll. Look here!"
exhibiting the jagged hole, and also the empty pocket which lay upon the
floor, "I just waked up to find him gone. He can't have got far, though.
I guess he thinks I ain't on to that rock chamber Gallito blasted out
for him in the Mont d'Or, but he showed it to Marthy here, and she
showed it to me. Come on, and we'll get down there quick."

"Some of us will." The sheriff was inclined to believe her, and yet he
was still suspicious. A rock chamber in the Mont d'Or! That certainly
accounted for the miraculous escape of last winter.

"Pedro?" he asked. "Are you sure it ain't Jose?"

"I ain't heard of any Jose, have you Marthy?" asked Mrs. Nitschkan
innocently. "Pedro was his name. But come on quick."

"Two of you boys search this cabin and the woods around," ordered the
sheriff, "and two of you go up to Seagreave's cabin. The rest come along
with me."

Led by Mrs. Nitschkan, still volubly lamenting her loss, they started
down the hill toward the ravine, when the sheriff suddenly looked up to
see upon the crest of the hill just before it dipped into a descending
slope two horsemen at full gallop, both horses and riders outlined
against the sky.

"Our men are up there, boys," he cried. "Quick. I've got the fastest
horse in the county, and we'll get them before they get to three rocks."

He was back to his horse again and on it and up the hill before his men
were fairly in the saddle. It was a race after that, and so rapidly did
he gain on Gallito and Jose that it looked as if his prediction of
getting them before they reached three rocks was about to be verified.
"I must do it, I must do it," he kept muttering to himself, "for it's
bad going after that, and it'll take us all some time to find him."

He was lessening the distance between them with every long, powerful
stride of his horse, but already the three rocks, gaunt and high, loomed
before him as if forming an i