e excitement prevailed; a reward
of five thousand dollars was advertised for the apprehension of the
outlaws; the camp fairly seethed with rage, and the mining country for
miles around was stirred by a determination to hunt out and kill the
miscreants. Detectives came from Denver and snooped around. Everybody
bought extra guns and laid in a further supply of ammunition. Yet the
stage robbers--bless you! nobody could find hide or hair of 'em.

Miss Woppit stood her share of the excitement and alarm as long as she
could, and then she spoke her mind to Jim. He told us about it. Miss
Woppit owed a certain duty to Jim, she said; was it not enough for her to
be worried almost to death with fears for his safety as marshal of the
camp? Was it fair that in addition to this haunting terror she should be
constantly harassed by a consciousness of her own personal danger? She
was a woman and alone in a cabin some distance from any other habitation;
one crime had been committed within a step of that isolated cabin; what
further crime might not be attempted by the miscreants?

"The girl is skeered," said Jim Woppit, "and I don't know that I wonder
at it. Women folks is nervous-like, anyhow, and these doings of late hev
been enough to worrit the strongest of us men."

"Why, there ain't an hour in the day," testified Casey, "that Miss Woppit
don't telephone down here to ask whether everything is all right, and
whether Jim is O. K."

"I know it," said Jim. "The girl is skeered, and I 'd oughter thought of
it before. I must bring her down into the camp to live. Jest ez soon ez
I can git the lumber I 'll put up a cabin on the Bush lot next to the
bank."

Jim owned the Bush lot, as it was called. He had talked about building a
store there in the spring, but we all applauded this sudden determination
to put up a cabin instead, a home for his sister. That was a
determination that bespoke a thoughtfulness and a tenderness that
ennobled Jim Woppit in our opinions. It was the square thing.

Barber Sam, ever fertile in suggestion, allowed that it might be a pious
idea for Miss Woppit to move down to the Mears House and board there
until the new cabin was built. Possibly the circumstance that Barber Sam
himself boarded at the Mears House did not inspire this suggestion. At
any rate, the suggestion seemed a good one, but Jim duly reported that
his sister thought it better to stay in the old place till the new place
was ready;