ht say too much. As it
was, I knocked the town to the fellow all I could. But he seemed
hell-bent on getting there, and getting there quick. He was a fool
Kentuckian, and you can't head off a bull-headed Kentuckian with
subtleties or hints. I've met one or two of them before. And there was
a girl along who seemed as anxious to get there as he was. That girl
was all to the good!"

Saxon leaned suddenly forward.

"A Kentuckian?" he demanded. "Did you hear his name?"

"Sure," announced Mr. Rodman. "Little Howard Stanley picks up
information all along the way. The chap was named George Steele,
and----"

But the speaker broke off in his story, to stand astounded at the
conduct of his auditor.

"And the girl!" shouted Saxon. "Her name?"

"Her name," replied the intriguer, "was Miss Filson."

Suddenly, the inattention of the other had fallen away, and he had
wheeled, his jaw dropping. For an instant, he stood in an attitude of
bewildered shock, gripping the support of the rail like a
prize-fighter struggling against the groggy blackness of the knock-out
blow.

Saxon stood such a length of time as it might have required for the
referee to count nine over him, had the support he gripped been that
of the prize-ring instead of the steamer's rail. Then, he stepped
forward, and gripped Rodman's arm with fingers that bit into the
flesh.

"Rodman," he said in a low voice that was almost a whisper, between
his labored breathings, "I've got to talk to you--alone. There's not a
minute to lose. Come to my stateroom."

CHAPTER XII

Below, in the narrow confines of the cabin, Saxon paced back and forth
excitedly as he talked. For five minutes, he did not pause, and the
other man, sitting on the camp-stool in a corner of the place,
followed him with eyes much as a lion-tamer, shut in a cage with his
uncertain charge, keeps his gaze bent on the animal. As he listened,
Rodman's expression ran a gamut from astonishment, through sympathy,
and into final distrust. At last, Saxon ended with:

"And, so, I've got to get them away from there. I've got to get back
to that town, and you must manage it. For God's sake, don't delay!"
The painter had not touched on the irrelevant point of his own
mystery, or why the girl had followed him. That would have been a
story the other would not have believed, and there was no time for
argument and futile personalities. The slow northward fifteen knots
had all at once become a fevered rac