al, resaddled--with Stanley's saddle--and led away into
the dark.

Stanley exchanged greetings with the half-dozen customers who lingered at
the counters, and demanded his mail. Zurich handed out two fat letters
with the postmark of Abingdon, New York. While Stanley read them, Zurich
called across the store to a purchaser of cigars and tobacco:

"Hello, Wiley! Thought you had gone to Silverbell so wild and fierce."

"Am a-going now," said Wiley, "soon as I throw a couple or three drinks
under my belt."

"Say, Bat, do you think you'll make the morning train? It's going on nine
now."

"Surest thing you know! That span of mine can stroll along mighty peart.
Once I get out on the flat, we'll burn the breeze."

"Come over here, then," said Zurich. "I want you to take some cash and
send it down to the bank by express--about eight hundred; and some checks
besides. I can't wait for the stage--it won't get there till to-morrow
night. I've overdrawn my account, with my usual carelessness, and I want
this money to get to the bank before the checks do."

Stanley went back to his little one-roomed house. He shaved, bathed, laid
out his Sunday best, re-read his precious letters, and dropped off to
dreamless sleep.

Between midnight and one o'clock Bat Wiley, wild-eyed and raging, burst
into the barroom of the Admiral Dewey and startled with a tale of wrongs
such part of wakeful Cobre as there made wassail. At the crossing of
Largo Draw he had been held up at a gun's point by a single robber on
horseback; Zurich's money had been taken from him, together with some
seventy dollars of his own; his team had been turned loose; it had taken
him nearly an hour to catch them again, so delaying the alarm by that
much.

Boots and spurs; saddling of horses; Bob Holland, the deputy sheriff, was
called from his bed; a swift posse galloped into the night, joined at the
last moment by Mr. Dewing, who had retired early, but had been roused by
the clamor.

They came to Largo Crossing at daybreak. The trail of the robber's horse
led straight to Cobre, following bypaths through the mountains. The
tracks showed plainly that his coming had been by these same short cuts,
saving time while Bat Wiley had followed the tortuous stage road through
the hills. Halfway back a heavy spur lay in the trail; some one
recognized it as Stanley Mitchell's--a smith-wrought spur, painfully
fashioned from a single piece of drill steel.

They came to Cobre befo