e time ain't far off when he'll find a two-foot
ditch again and a pick and grub wages room enough and to spare for him
and his kind of cattle."

"You're not drinking," said Jack Hamlin cheerfully.

Steptoe turned towards the bar, and then started. "Where's Van Loo?" he
demanded of Jack sharply.

Jack jerked his thumb over his shoulder. "Gone to hurry up his girl, I
reckon. I calculate he ain't got much time to fool away here."

Steptoe glanced suspiciously at Jack. But at the same moment they
were all startled--even Jack himself--at the apparition of Mrs. Barker
passing hurriedly along the veranda before the windows in the direction
of the still waiting buggy. "D--n it!" said Steptoe in a fierce whisper
to the man next him. "Tell her not THERE--at the back door!" But before
the messenger reached the door there was a sudden rattle of wheels, and
with one accord all except Hamlin rushed to the veranda, only to see
Mrs. Barker driving rapidly away alone. Steptoe turned back into the
room, but Jack also had disappeared.

For in the confusion created at the sight of Mrs. Barker, he had slipped
to the back door and found, as he suspected, only one horse, and that
with a side-saddle on. His intuitions were right. Van Loo, when he
disappeared from the saloon, had instantly fled, taking the other horse
and abandoning the woman to her fate. Jack as instantly leaped upon the
remaining saddle and dashed after him. Presently he caught a glimpse of
the fugitive in the distance, heard the half-angry, half-ironical shouts
of the crowd at the back door, and as he reached the hilltop saw, with a
mingling of satisfaction and perplexity, Mrs. Barker on the other road,
still driving frantically in the direction of the railroad station. At
which Mr. Hamlin halted, threw away his encumbering saddle, and,
good rider that he was, remounted the horse, barebacked but for his
blanket-pad, and thrusting his knees in the loose girths, again dashed
forwards,--with such good results that, as Van Loo galloped up to the
stagecoach office, at the next station, and was about to enter the
waiting coach for Marysville, the soft hand of Mr. Hamlin was laid on
his shoulder.

"I told you," said Jack blandly, "that I had plenty of time. I would
have been here BEFORE and even overtaken you, only you had the better
horse and the only saddle."

Van Loo recoiled. But he was now desperate and reckless. Beckoning Jack
out of earshot of the other passengers, h