se. He dropped them to the floor and stared angrily
at them.

The bulky mail bag, save for the damp and mud, was untouched. The lean
bag however had been slit open. Hap Smith kicked it in a sudden access
of rage.

"There was ten thousan' dollars in there, in green backs," he said
heavily. "They trusted it to me an' Bert Stone to get across with it.
An' now ..."

His face was puckered with rage and shame. He went slowly to where Bert
Stone lay. His friend was white and unconscious ... perhaps already his
tale was told. Hap Smith looked from him to the girl who, her face as
white as Bert's, was trying to staunch the flow of blood.

"I said it," he muttered lugubriously; "the devil's own night."

CHAPTER III

BUCK THORNTON, MAN'S MAN

Those who had rushed into the outer darkness in the wake of the
highwayman returned presently. Mere impulse and swift natural reaction
from their former enforced inactivity rather than any hope of success
had sent them hot-foot on the pursuit. The noisy, windy night, the
absolute dark, obviated all possibility of coming up with him. Grumbling
and theorising, they returned to the room and closed the door behind
them.

Now that the tense moment of the actual robbery had passed there was a
general buzzing talk, voices lifted in surmise, a lively excitement
replacing the cosy quiet of a few moments ago. Voices from the spare bed
room urged Ma Drury to bring an account of the adventure, and Poke's
wife, having first escorted the wounded man to her own bed and donned a
wrapper and shoes and stockings, gave to Lew Yates's women folk as
circumstantial a description of the whole affair as though she herself
had witnessed it.

After a while a man here and there began to eat, taking a slab of bread
and meat in one hand and a cup of black coffee in the other, walking
back and forth and talking thickly. The girl at the fireplace sat stiff
and still, staring at the flames; she had lost her appetite, had quite
forgotten it in fact. At first from under the hand shading her eyes she
watched the men going for one drink after another, the strong drink of
the frontier; but after a little, as though this had been a novel sight
in the beginning but soon lost interest for her, she let her look droop
to the fire. Fresh dry fuel had been piled on the back log and at last a
grateful sense of warmth and sleepiness pervaded her being. She no
longer felt hunger; she was too tired, her eyelids had grow