was added to the
first experience. At the point of robbery magically had appeared a man
and--if the stage driver's solemn assertion that at the time of the
hold-up no animal was in sight could be believed--subsequently, when
needed, a large horse. Whence had they come? Not along the road in
either direction: the unbroken, deep dust assured that. Not down the
mountain from above, for the cliff rose sheer for at least three hundred
feet. Jimmy Gaynes, following unconsciously the general train of
conjecture, craned his neck over the edge of the road. The broken jagged
rock and shale dropped off an hundred feet to a tangle of manzanita and
snowbrush.

California John looked over, too.

"Couldn't even get sheep up that," said he, "let alone a sixteen-hand
horse."

Old Man Bright was sunk in a superstitious torpor. He had lost hundreds
of thousands where he would have hated to spend pennies; yet the
financial part of the loss hardly touched him. He mumbled fearfully to
himself, and took not the slightest interest in the half-hearted
attempts to read the mystery. When the others moved, he moved with them,
because he was afraid to be left alone.

After the men had assured themselves again and again that the horse and
the man had apparently materialized from thin air exactly at the point
of robbery, they again followed the tracks to the broad sheet of rock.
Whither had the robber gone? Back into the thin air whence he had come.
There was no other solution. No tracks ahead; an absolute and physical
impossibility of anything without wings getting up or down the flanking
precipices--these were the incontestable facts.

After this second robbery a gloom descended on Bright's Cove which
lasted through many months. Old Man Bright hunted out the squaw with
whom he had first discovered the diggings, and set her up in an
establishment with gay curtains, glass danglers and red doileys. Each
month he paid for her provisions and sent to her a sum of money. In this
manner, at least, the phantom road agent had furthered the ends of
justice. The sop to the powers of darkness appeared to be effective in
this respect: no more hold-ups occurred; no more mysterious tracks
appeared in the dust; gradually men's minds swung back to the balanced
and normal, and the life of the camp went forward on its appointed way.

Nevertheless, certain effects remained. Each express went out heavily
guarded, and preceded and followed by men on horseback. Str