and set the whole town to looking for a
murderer? The minute this happened, the real criminal would take alarm
and destroy evidence I might have gathered if I had stayed by the case.
I promised myself that it should be simply "there and back" with me in
the Skeels matter.

This is the way it looked to me in the Pullman; then--once in Los
Angeles--I allowed myself to get hot telling the Hicks people what I
thought of them, explaining how I'd have run the chase, and wound up by
giving seven days to it--seven precious, irreclaimable days--while
everything lay wide open there in the north, and I couldn't get any
satisfactory word from the office, and none of any sort from Worth.

That Skeels trail kept me to it, with my tongue hanging out; again and
again I seemed to have him; every time I missed him by an hour or so;
and that convinced me that he was straining every nerve, and that he
probably had the whole of the loot still with him. At last, I seemed to
have him in a perfect trap--Ensenada, on the Peninsula. You get into and
out of Ensenada by steamboat only, except back to the mines on foot or
donkey. The two days I had to wait over in San Diego for the boat which
would follow the one Skeels had taken were a mighty uneasy time. If I'd
imagined for a moment that he wasn't on the dodge--that he was there
openly--I'd have wired the Mexican authorities, and had him waiting for
me in jail. But the Mexican officials are a rotten lot; it seemed to me
best to go it alone.

What I found in Ensenada was that Skeels had been there, quite publicly,
under his own name; he had come alone and departed with a companion,
Hinch Dial, a drill operator from the mines, a transient, a pick-up
laborer, seemingly as close-mouthed as Silent Steve himself. Steve had
come on one steamer and the two had left on the next. That north-bound
boat we passed two hours off Point Loma was carrying Skeels and his pal
back to San Diego!

Again two days lost, waiting for the steamer back. And when I got to San
Diego, the trail was stone cold. I had sent Worth almost daily reports
in care of my office, not wanting them to lie around at Santa Ysobel
during the confusion of the funeral and all; but even before I went to
Ensenada, telegrams from Roberts had informed me that these reports
could not be delivered as Worth had not been at the office, and
telephone messages to Santa Ysobel and the Palace Hotel had failed to
locate him. When I believed I had Skee