mn good shot or a damn poor one. I hung up both hands and yelled we
was down and out. What could I do? This outfit couldn't a fit a bumble
bee. And I couldn't git away, or git hold of no gun, or see anything to
shoot, if I did. He was behind that big rock."

The men nodded. They were many of them hard hit, but they had lived too
long in the West not to recognize the justice of the driver's implied
contention that he had done his best.

"He told me to throw out them sacks, and to be damn quick about it,"
went on the driver. "Then I drove home."

"What sort of a lookin' fellow was he?" asked someone. "Same one as last
year?"

"I never seen him," said the driver. "He hung behind his rock. He was
organized for shoot, and if the messengers hadn't happened to' a' been
out of it, I believe he could have killed us all."

"What did his hoss look like?" inquired California John.

"He didn't have no horse," stated the driver. "Leastways, not near him.
There was no cover. He might have been around a p'int. And I can sw'ar
to this: there weren't no tracks of no kind from there to camp."

They caught up horses and started out. When they came to the Lost Dog,
they stopped and looked at each other.

"Poor old Babes," said Simmins. "Biggest clean-up yet; and first time
one of 'em didn't go 'long."

"I'm glad they didn't," said Tibbetts. "That agent would have killed 'em
shore!"

They called out the Gaynes brothers and broke the news. For once the
jovial youngsters had no joke to make.

"This is getting serious," said Jimmy, seriously. "We can't afford to
lose that much."

George whistled dolefully, and went into the corral for the mules.

The party toiled up the mountain. Plainly in the dust could be made out
the trail of the express ascending and descending. Plain also were the
signs where the driver had dumped out the gold bags and turned around.
From that point the tracks of a man and a horse led to the sheet of
rock. Beyond that, nothing.

The men stared at each other a little frightened. Somebody swore softly.

"Boys," said Bright in a strained voice, "do you know how much was in
that express? A half million! There's nary earthly hoss can carry over
half a ton! And this one treads as light as a saddler."

They looked at each other blankly. Several even glanced in apprehension
at the sky.

In a perfunctory manner, for the sake of doing something, those skilled
in trail-reading went back over the ground. Nothing