the
hogback he began to take advantage of the screen of timber on the
lower side of the road, and to ride more cautiously. However, to any
one who might have been watching, his movements still would have been
easily discernible, and it would have appeared that he wasn't quite
sure of himself. Twice he turned off at what he appeared to think was
the beginning of a trail, and both times he again turned back to the
road.

Then, as he reached the south end of the hogback where the trail left
the road and cut straight across to the mine, two horsemen broke from
the timber, and Rathburn reined in his horse as the guns which covered
him glinted.

The taller of the pair of night riders kept him covered with two guns
while the other rode in close and jerked the weapon from his holster.

"C'mon with the package!" said this man in a hoarse voice. "We won't
take a chance on you. If you make any kind of a break you'll get it
where it'll do most good."

There was a sneering inflection in the voice.

Rathburn's hand, as it moved downward toward his shirt, hovered an
instant above where his good gun was stuck in his waistband, out of
sight under the skirt of his coat; then it moved to the open shirt at
his throat. He drew out the package and held it out toward the other.

The man closed in and snatched the package, glancing at it in the dim
starlight.

"Now back the way you came an' don't invite no shootin'!" was the
brief command.

Rathburn whirled his horse and drove in his spurs. As he fled from the
scene a harsh laugh came to his ears from behind. Then utter silence
save for the pounding of his horse's hoofs in the hard road back down
the hogback.

"Jog along, hoss," Rathburn crooned as he sped down the long slopes
toward town; "maybe we're peggin' things wrong, an' if it turns out
that way we've a powerful long ways to go."

It lacked a few minutes of being two hours after midnight when he
reached the Carlisle cabin. There he reined in his horse, dismounted
in the shadow of the timber, and crept to a window. The moon had risen
and was bathing the hills in a ghostly light in which every object
stood out clear-cut and easily distinguishable. Rathburn peered into
the two front windows, but could see nothing. Then, from a side window
into which the moonlight filtered, he made out a bedroom. It was not
occupied. From the other side of the cabin he saw another bedroom,
and it, too, was unoccupied.

"Nobody home," he mut