fter midnight. To file open the grill and to blow up the safe must
have taken several hours. Before morning the dogs of Holt had taken the
trail. If their owner were with them, it was a safe bet that the sled
carried forty thousand dollars in Alaska gold dust.

So far the mind of the Scotchman followed the probabilities logically,
but at this point it made a jump. There were at least two robbers. He
was morally sure of that, for this was not a one-man job. Now, if Holt
had with him a companion, who of all those in Kusiak was the most likely
man? He was a friendless, crabbed old fellow. Since coming to Kusiak old
Gideon had been seen constantly with one man. Together they had driven
out the day before and tried his new team. They had been with each other
at dinner and had later left the hotel together. The name of the man who
had been so friendly with old Holt was Gordon Elliot--and Elliot not
only was another enemy of Macdonald, but had very good reasons for
getting out of the country just now.

The strong jaw of the mine-owner stood out saliently as he gave short,
sharp orders to men in the crowd. One was to get the coroner, a second
Wally Selfridge, another the United States District Attorney. He divided
the rest into squads to guard the roads leading out of town and to see
that nobody passed for the present.

As soon as the men he had sent for arrived, Macdonald went over the
scene of the crime with them. It was plain that the dynamiting had been
done by an old-time miner who knew his business, but there had been
brains in the planning of the robbery.

"There is no ivory above the ears of the man who bossed this job,"
Macdonald told the others. "He picks a night when we're all at the club,
more than half a mile from here, a stormy night when folks are not
wandering the streets. He knows that the wind will deaden the sound of
the dynamite and that the snow will wipe out any tracks that might help
to identify him and his pal or show which way they have gone."

The coroner took charge of the body and Wally of the bank. The
mine-owner and the district attorney walked up to the hotel together. As
soon as they had explained what they wanted, the landlord got a passkey
and took them to the room Holt had used.

Apparently the bed had been slept in. In the waste-paper basket the
district attorney found something which he held up in a significant
silence. Macdonald stepped forward and took from him a small cloth sack.