rned coming up here," Fred explained.
"There was a negro in the party who had been a chef in a Chicago hotel;
and he was the one soul in the crowd that treated me half decently."

"Perhaps uncle will retain you as cook," said Randy, mischievously, and
then he stopped short, for he did not wish to hurt Fred's feelings. The
supper passed off pleasantly, and Fred announced that he felt a hundred
times better than the day previous.

It was around ten o'clock, and the sun had just set over the mountains
to the westward, leaving the Hollow in an uncertain, pale-blue light,
which would last until sunrise at four, when a messenger on mule-back
dashed along the trail from Gold Bottom. "Thar's a lynchin' goin' on
down to Smedley's!" he yelled, as he sped by. "They've caught a sneak
thief by the name o' Guardley, an' they're goin' ter make him do er
dance on nuthin'. Better be gittin' down thar, if ye want ter see
justice done!"

CHAPTER XXV.

MORE WORK IN THE GULCHES.

"They are going to lynch a fellow named Guardley!" ejaculated Earl. "I
wonder if it can be Jasper Guardley."

"It must be; it's not likely there is another Guardley up here--the name
isn't as common as all that," returned Randy. "Shall we go?"

Earl hesitated. There was something appalling in a lynching, to his
mind. Yet he was curious to know more of the crime for which the
prisoner was about to suffer.

"Yes, we might as well--if Fred will watch the camp," he answered.

"I'll watch it as well as I can," answered Fred. The work he had been
doing had tired him more than he would admit, and he was glad enough to
take it easy. He knew Guardley, but took small interest in the man his
father had sent up more than once for petty crimes.

In less than five minutes Earl and Randy were off, stalking over the
hills and along Gold Bottom Creek as rapidly as their tired limbs would
carry them. Smedley's, a settlement of two-score of tents and one board
cabin where a few odds and ends could be bought, was nearly two miles
distance, yet they arrived there in less than half an hour--fast time
when the state of the trails they had travelled was taken into
consideration.

They found that the prisoner had been bound, hands and feet, and placed
in the storeroom of the board cabin, a little shed in the rear, scarcely
eight feet by twelve and hardly high enough for a man to stand in. Two
rough-looking miners were on guard, one with a gun, and the other with
an ol