fill himself up with Caraher's whiskey. He's only taken back what you
plundered him of, and now you're going to hound him over the State,
hunt him down like a wild animal, and bring him to the gallows at San
Quentin. That's my version of the affair, Mister Genslinger, but it's
worth your subsidy from the P. and S. W. to print it."

There was a murmur of approval from the crowd that stood around, and
Genslinger, with an angry shrug of one shoulder, took himself away.

At length, Annixter brought Hilma through the crowd to where young Vacca
was waiting with the team. However, they could not at once start for
the ranch, Annixter wishing to ask some questions at the freight office
about a final consignment of chairs. It was nearly eleven o'clock before
they could start home. But to gain the Upper Road to Quien Sabe, it was
necessary to traverse all of Main Street, running through the heart of
Bonneville.

The entire town seemed to be upon the sidewalks. By now the rain was
over and the sun shining. The story of the hold-up--the work of a man
whom every one knew and liked--was in every mouth. How had Dyke come to
do it? Who would have believed it of him? Think of his poor mother
and the little tad. Well, after all, he was not so much to blame; the
railroad people had brought it on themselves. But he had shot a man
to death. Ah, that was a serious business. Good-natured, big,
broad-shouldered, jovial Dyke, the man they knew, with whom they had
shaken hands only yesterday, yes, and drank with him. He had shot a man,
killed him, had stood there in the dark and in the rain while they
were asleep in their beds, and had killed a man. Now where was he?
Instinctively eyes were turned eastward, over the tops of the houses,
or down vistas of side streets to where the foot-hills of the mountains
rose dim and vast over the edge of the valley. He was in amongst them;
somewhere, in all that pile of blue crests and purple canyons he was
hidden away. Now for weeks of searching, false alarms, clews, trailings,
watchings, all the thrill and heart-bursting excitement of a man-hunt.
Would he get away? Hardly a man on the sidewalks of the town that day
who did not hope for it.

As Annixter's team trotted through the central portion of the town,
young Vacca pointed to a denser and larger crowd around the rear
entrance of the City Hall. Fully twenty saddle horses were tied to
the iron rail underneath the scant, half-grown trees near by, and as