f the last of those pressing to get out.

The Boy's low cry was drowned in the din. He lunged forward, but the
Colonel gripped him. Looking up, he saw that Kentucky understood, and
meant somehow to manage the business quietly.

Jack was trying, now right, now left, to force his way through the
congestion at the door, like a harried rabbit at a wattled fence. A
touch on the shoulder simultaneously with the click of a trigger at his
ear brought his face round over his shoulder. He made the instinctive
pioneer motion to his hip, looked into the bore of the Colonel's
pistol, and under Keith's grip dropped his "gun-hand" with a smothered
oath.

Or was it that other weapon in the Colonel's left that bleached the
ruddy face? Simply the block of wood. On the under side, dried in, like
a faint stain, four muddy finger-prints, index joint lacking. Without a
word the Colonel turned the upper side out. A smudge?--no--the grain of
human skin clean printed--a distorted palm without a thumb. Only one
man in Minook could make that sign manual!

The last of the crowd were over the threshold now, and still no word
was spoken by those who stayed behind, till the Colonel said to the
Boy:

"Go with 'em, and look after Butts. Give us five minutes; more if you
can!"

He laid the block on a cracker-box, and, keeping pistol and eye still
on the thief, took his watch in his left hand, as the Boy shot through
the door.

Butts was making a good fight for his life, but he was becoming
exhausted. The leading spirits were running him down the bank to where
a crooked cotton-wood leaned cautiously over the Never-Know-What, as if
to spy out the river's secret.

But after arriving there, they were a little delayed for lack of what
they called tackle. They sent a man off for it, and then sent another
to hurry up the man. The Boy stood at the edge of the crowd, a little
above them, watching Maudie's door, and with feverish anxiety turning
every few seconds to see how it was with Butts.

Up in the cabin No-Thumb-Jack had pulled out of the usual capacious
pockets of the miner's brown-duck-pockets that fasten with a patent
snap--a tattered pocket-book, fat with bills. He plunged deeper and
brought up Pacific Coast eagles and five-dollar pieces, Canadian and
American gold that went rolling out of his maimed and nervous hand
across the tablet to the scales and set the brass pans sawing up and
down.

Keith, his revolver still at full cock, had pick