rey soft shirt and neck-handkerchief and a large black hat,
kept the stage in view from around the corner of the wood shed standing
back of the superintendent's cabin. Then, swinging up to the back of a
rangy granite-coloured roan, he turned into the road.

"We're playing to win this time, Comet," he said softly. "And, as we
said all along, Blackie's the capper for their game. Shake a foot,
Comet, old boy. Maybe at the end of a hard day's work we'll look in
on ... her."

When, an hour later, the stage made its brief stop in Miller's Flat to
take on mail bags Blackie was leaning out smoking a cigar and looking
about him alertly. A lounger near the post-office door turned to watch in
great seeming idleness. His eyes met the bartender's for a second and he
nodded casually.

"How's everything?" he asked in the customary inconsequential manner of
casual acquaintanceship.

"Fine," said Blackie in a tone of equal casualness. "Couldn't be
better."

The stranger slouched on his way, climbed into the saddle of the horse
he had left by the door, and rode off.... And Buck Thornton, from the
bend in the road where he had halted Comet under a big live oak tree,
noted how the horseman rode on his spurs when once he had passed from
the sight of the stage driver.

"Taking the Red Canon trail," he marked with satisfaction. "Carrying the
word to Broderick and Pollard that there's been no slip-up and that the
box is really aboard. And now.... Shake a foot, Comet; here's where we
put one over on Blackie."

The man who had passed the time of day with the saloon man had
disappeared over a ridge and out of sight; Thornton consequently rode
swiftly to overtake the stage. Before the four running horses had drawn
the creaking wagon after them a half mile Hap Smith stopped his horses
in answer to the shout from behind him and stared over his shoulder
wonderingly.

"What the hell ..." he began. And then with a shade of relief in his
tone and yet half hesitatingly, the frown still on his face as Thornton
rode close up, "It's you, is it? I thought for a minute...."

"That it was Broderick?" laughed Thornton. "You didn't think so, did
you, Blackie?"

Blackie drew back and slipped his hand covertly into his coat pocket.
Thornton, giving no sign that he had seen, said briefly to Hap Smith:

"You've talked things over with Banker Templeton? And with Comstock?"

"Yes," said Hap Smith, his thick, squat figure growing tense where he
sat as t