ce. The editor thanks you for your loyal support and
patronage.

The winner of Claim Number One is Dr. Warren Slavens, of Kansas
City, Missouri. Axel Peterson, first announced as the winner,
drew Number Two.

Editor Mong had followed the tradition of the rural school of journalism
in leaving the most important feature of his news for the last line.

"Well!" said the toolmaker. "So our doctor is the winner! But it's a
marvel that the editor didn't turn the paper over to say so. I never saw
such a botch at writing news!"

He did not know, any more than any of the thousands who read that
ingenuous announcement, that Editor Mong was working his graft overtime.
They did not know that he had entered into a conspiracy to deceive them
before the drawing began, the clerk in charge of the stage-office and
the one telephone of the place being in on the swindle.

Mong knew that the Meander stage would leave for Comanche at eight in
the morning, or two hours before the drawing began. It was the only
means, exclusive of the telephone, by which news could travel that day
between the two places, and as it could carry no news of the drawing his
scheme was secure.

Mong had feared that his extras might not move with the desired
celerity during the entire day--in which expectation he was agreeably
deceived--so he deliberately withheld the name of the winner of Number
One, substituting for it in his first extra the name of the winner of
Number Two. He believed that every person in Comanche would rush out of
bed with two bits in hand for the extra making the correction, and his
guess was good.

Walker and Bentley hurried back to the Hotel Metropole to find that
Sergeant Schaefer had arrived ahead of them with the news. They were all
up in picturesque _deshabille_, Horace with a blanket around him like a
bald-headed brave, his bare feet showing beneath it. The camp was in a
state of pleasurable excitement; but Dr. Slavens was not there to share
it, nor to receive the congratulations which all were ready to offer
with true sincerity.

"I wonder where he is?" questioned Horace a little impatiently.

He did not like to forego the ceremony, but he wanted to get back to
bed, for a man's legs soon begin to feel chilly in that mountain wind.

"He left here not very long ago," said Agnes; "perhaps not more than an
hour. I was just preparing to go to bed."

"It's a fine thing for him," commented Sergeant Schaefer. "He can