ever forget. I used to
pass a distillery warehouse on my way to school twice a day, and the
smell of whisky-barrels was part of my early education; so I knew.

"From the noise of voices and the smell of the barrels I judged that I
must be behind the stage of the variety-theater tent, where they kept
the stock of whisky for the bar. In a little while I was able to pick up
the identity of one of the voices. The other one--there were two of them
near me--belonged to a man I didn't know. You have heard us speak, when
we were back in camp, of Hun Shanklin, the gambler?"

She nodded, her face white, her lips parted, her breath hanging between
them as by a thread.

"It was his voice that I heard; I was coming stronger every second. I
made out that they were talking of my undesirable presence in that
community. Shanklin owed me a grudge on account of a push that I gave
his table one night when he was robbing a young fool with more money
than brains by his downright crooked game. That shove laid the old
rascal's scheme bare and kept him out of several thousand dollars that
night.

"I supposed until last night that his sole object in assaulting me in
the dark was to pay off this score; but there was another and more
important side to it than that. Shanklin and the fellow with him,
whoever it was, knew that I was the winner of Number One, and they
wanted me out of the way.

"I'm not clear yet in my mind just why; but they must have had some
inside information ahead of others in Comanche that I, and not Peterson,
was the lucky man, as reported first. For that extra wasn't out then."

"It was all a swindle, the extra," she hastened to explain. "That editor
knew all the time who Number One was. He held your name back just so he
might sell a lot more papers. We found out about it after we came
here."

"Of course Shanklin was in with him some way. They're all crooks," the
doctor commented.

"Perhaps the other man was that wicked chief of police," said she. "I
wouldn't consider him above it."

"Nor I," Slavens admitted. "But I don't know; I never heard him speak. I
thought I heard that other voice this morning here in Meander, but I'm
not sure. I'll be listening. I must get on with my yarn, and I warn you
now that I'm going to tax your credulity and try your confidence before
I'm through.

"I lay there gathering strength while they talked about putting me away,
like a man who had been choked. I couldn't see them when I open