and the
money paid--which was on the 11th--I began to stick to Fuller's track
without dropping it for a moment. That night--no, 12th, for it was a
little past midnight--I tracked him to his room, which was four doors
from mine in the same hall; then I went back and put on my muddy
day-laborer disguise, darkened my complexion, and sat down in my room in
the gloom, with a gripsack handy, with a change in it, and my door ajar.
For I suspected that the bird would take wing now. In half an hour an
old woman passed by, carrying a grip; I caught the familiar whiff, and
followed with my grip, for it was Fuller. He left the hotel by a side
entrance, and at the corner he turned up an unfrequented street and
walked three blocks in a light rain and a heavy darkness, and got into
a two-horse hack, which, of course, was waiting for him by appointment.
I took a seat (uninvited) on the trunk platform behind, and we drove
briskly off. We drove ten miles, and the hack stopped at a way station
and was discharged. Fuller got out and took a seat on a barrow under
the awning, as far as he could get from the light; I went inside, and
watched the ticket-office. Fuller bought no ticket; I bought none.
Presently the train came along, and he boarded a car; I entered the same
car at the other end, and came down the aisle and took the seat behind
him. When he paid the conductor and named his objective point, I dropped
back several seats, while the conductor was changing a bill, and when he
came to me I paid to the same place--about a hundred miles westward.
From that time for a week on end he led me a dance. He travelled here and
there and yonder--always on a general westward trend--but he was not a
woman after the first day. He was a laborer, like myself, and wore bushy
false whiskers. His outfit was perfect, and he could do the character
without thinking about it, for he had served the trade for wages. His
nearest friend could not have recognized him. At last he located himself
here, the obscurest little mountain camp in Montana; he has a shanty,
and goes out prospecting daily; is gone all day, and avoids society.
I am living at a miner's boarding-house, and it is an awful place: the
bunks, the food, the dirt--everything.
We have been here four weeks, and in that time I have seen him but
once; but every night I go over his track and post myself. As soon as he
engaged a shanty here I went to a town fifty miles away and telegraphed
that Denver h
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