intervals one
of the local papers of Independence, the nearest large town, found its
way into the cattle camps on the ranges, and occasionally one of the
Sunday editions of a Sacramento journal, weeks old, was passed from hand
to hand. Marcus ceased to hear from the Sieppes. As for San Francisco,
it was as far from him as was London or Vienna.

One day, a fortnight after McTeague's flight from San Francisco, Marcus
rode into Modoc, to find a group of men gathered about a notice affixed
to the outside of the Wells-Fargo office. It was an offer of reward for
the arrest and apprehension of a murderer. The crime had been committed
in San Francisco, but the man wanted had been traced as far as the
western portion of Inyo County, and was believed at that time to be in
hiding in either the Pinto or Panamint hills, in the vicinity of Keeler.

Marcus reached Keeler on the afternoon of that same day. Half a mile
from the town his pony fell and died from exhaustion. Marcus did not
stop even to remove the saddle. He arrived in the barroom of the hotel
in Keeler just after the posse had been made up. The sheriff, who had
come down from Independence that morning, at first refused his offer of
assistance. He had enough men already--too many, in fact. The country
travelled through would be hard, and it would be difficult to find water
for so many men and horses.

"But none of you fellers have ever seen um," vociferated Marcus,
quivering with excitement and wrath. "I know um well. I could pick
um out in a million. I can identify um, and you fellers can't. And I
knew--I knew--good GOD! I knew that girl--his wife--in Frisco. She's
a cousin of mine, she is--she was--I thought once of--This thing's a
personal matter of mine--an' that money he got away with, that five
thousand, belongs to me by rights. Oh, never mind, I'm going along. Do
you hear?" he shouted, his fists raised, "I'm going along, I tell you.
There ain't a man of you big enough to stop me. Let's see you try
and stop me going. Let's see you once, any two of you." He filled the
barroom with his clamor.

"Lord love you, come along, then," said the sheriff.

The posse rode out of Keeler that same night. The keeper of the general
merchandise store, from whom Marcus had borrowed a second pony, had
informed them that Cribbens and his partner, whose description tallied
exactly with that given in the notice of reward, had outfitted at
his place with a view to prospecting in the P