ning it came with a shrill, terrifying sound. The
crowd at the corner broke and scattered before a rush of horsemen.
They seemed to come from all sides, and meet in the middle of the
street. Then we couldn't see the guard, but shots rang out, yells, and
then more firing; and the mounted men swept on across the street. Men
on foot were running after them and firing. In their wake a wounded
horse was rolling on the ground and there was something else sprawled
away from it that might have been a man. I had just a glimpse before
the crowd closed in upon it.

"Stay where you are," father said, and jumping out of the carriage, he
ran up the street. Other men were running past.

The horrible thought of the vigilance committee turned me sick. I
called to the driver to go forward, but, already the crowd was swarming
on both sides and our progress up the street was very slow. As we drew
near the place a man in the uniform of the guards, with blood running
down his face, went staggering by, another man supporting him; and I
heard him groaning out: "I don't see how it happened, my God, I don't
see how it happened!"

Another man, a young man, with his coattails flying and his silk hat
knocked over his eyes, burst out of the crowd close beside the
carriage. I recognized the dandy, Jack Tracy. He was so near I could
have touched him, and for one moment I forgot all about being a lady.
I grasped him, by the sleeve. "Tell me, for Heaven's sake, what has
happened!"

He fairly glared at me, so excited that I believe he didn't recognize
me. "They've got him--the Mexicans! He's gone!"

CHAPTER IX

THE CONCEALMENT

It took a deal more running back and forth, and questioning and
explaining, before I could come at any understanding of what had
happened. And even when I had heard as much as any one knew it was
strangely little--simply that a body of Mexican horsemen had swept out
upon the guard from apparently all points of the compass, had
overpowered them, leaving one dead and one of their own number wounded,
and swept on. After they had gone it was discovered that the prisoner
had vanished too. The cry had been that the horsemen had taken him;
but some of the guard who had followed the riders a little way declared
that he had not been among them, and one man insisted that he had seen
Johnny Montgomery dart in at the door of one of the small houses on
Jackson Street. This was immediately surrounded by police an