t once adopted, and the committee chosen. Besides
the chairman and Baldwin there were the vulture-faced secretary,
Harraway, Tiger Cormac, the brutal young assassin, Carter, the
treasurer, and the brothers Willaby, fearless and desperate men who
would stick at nothing.

The usual revelry of the lodge was short and subdued: for there was a
cloud upon the men's spirits, and many there for the first time began
to see the cloud of avenging Law drifting up in that serene sky under
which they had dwelt so long. The horrors they had dealt out to others
had been so much a part of their settled lives that the thought of
retribution had become a remote one, and so seemed the more startling
now that it came so closely upon them. They broke up early and left
their leaders to their council.

"Now, McMurdo!" said McGinty when they were alone. The seven men sat
frozen in their seats.

"I said just now that I knew Birdy Edwards," McMurdo explained. "I need
not tell you that he is not here under that name. He's a brave man, but
not a crazy one. He passes under the name of Steve Wilson, and he is
lodging at Hobson's Patch."

"How do you know this?"

"Because I fell into talk with him. I thought little of it at the time,
nor would have given it a second thought but for this letter; but now
I'm sure it's the man. I met him on the cars when I went down the line
on Wednesday--a hard case if ever there was one. He said he was a
reporter. I believed it for the moment. Wanted to know all he could
about the Scowrers and what he called 'the outrages' for a New York
paper. Asked me every kind of question so as to get something. You bet
I was giving nothing away. 'I'd pay for it and pay well,' said he, 'if
I could get some stuff that would suit my editor.' I said what I
thought would please him best, and he handed me a twenty-dollar bill
for my information. 'There's ten times that for you,' said he, 'if you
can find me all that I want.'"

"What did you tell him, then?"

"Any stuff I could make up."

"How do you know he wasn't a newspaper man?"

"I'll tell you. He got out at Hobson's Patch, and so did I. I chanced
into the telegraph bureau, and he was leaving it.

"'See here,' said the operator after he'd gone out, 'I guess we should
charge double rates for this.'--'I guess you should,' said I. He had
filled the form with stuff that might have been Chinese, for all we
could make of it. 'He fires a sheet of this off every day,' said the