dar Camp started
out one afternoon to raid 'em. They groped along through the woods whar
nobody could see 'em, kalkilatin' to come down with a rush on the camp,
over two miles away. And nobody DID see 'em, only ONE Chinaman wot they
met a mile from the camp, burnin' punk to his joss or devil, and he
scooted away just in the contrary direction. Well, sir, when they
waltzed into that camp, darn my skin! ef there was a Chinaman there, or
as much as a grain of rice to grab! Somebody had warned 'em! Well! this
sort o' got the boys, and they set about discoverin' how it was done.
One of 'em noticed that there was some of them bits of tissue paper
slips that they toss around at funerals lyin' along the road near the
camp, and another remembered that the Chinaman they met on the hill
tossed a lot of that paper in the air afore he scooted. Well, sir, the
wind carried just enough of that paper straight down the hill into
that camp ten minutes afore THEY could get there, to give them Chinamen
warnin'--whatever it was! Fact! Why, I've seen 'em stringin' along the
road just like them fellers we passed just now, and then stop all of a
suddent like hounds off the scent, jabber among themselves, and start
off in a different direction"--

"Just what they're doing now! By thunder!" interrupted another
passenger, who was looking through the rolled-up curtain at his side.

All the passengers turned by one accord and looked out. The file of
Chinamen under observation had indeed turned, and was even then moving
rapidly away at right angles from the road.

"Got some signal, you bet!" said the driver; "some yeller paper or piece
o' joss stick in the road. What?"

The remark was addressed to the passenger who had just placed his finger
on his lip, and indicated a stolid-looking Chinaman, overlooked before,
who was sitting in the back or "steerage" seat.

"Oh, he be darned!" said the driver impatiently. "HE is no account; he's
only the laundryman from Rocky Canyon. I'm talkin' of the coolie gang."

But here the conversation flagged, and the air growing keener, the flaps
of the leather side curtains were battened down. Masterton gave himself
up to conflicting reflections. The information that he had gathered
was meagre and unsatisfactory, and he could only trust to luck and
circumstance to fulfill his mission. The first glow of adventure having
passed, he was uneasily conscious that the mission was not to his taste.
The pretty, flushed but