e box room assigned him.

There nature asserted herself. The man had not slept for two nights; he
had travelled many miles on horseback, by train, and by buckboard; he
had experienced the most exhausting of emotions and experiences. He fell
asleep, and he did not awaken until after sun-up.

Promptly he began his inquiries. Saleratus Bill had passed through the
night before; he had ridden up the mill road.

Oldham ate his breakfast, saddled one of the team horses, and followed.
Ordinarily, he was little of a woodsman, but his anxiety sharpened his
wits and his eyes, so that a quarter mile from the summit he noticed
where a shod horse had turned off from the road. After a moment's
hesitation he turned his own animal to follow the trail. The horse
tracks were evidently fresh, and Oldham surmised that it was hardly
probable two horsemen had as yet that morning travelled the mill road.
While he debated, young Elliott swung down the dusty way headed toward
the village. He greeted Oldham.

"Is Orde back at headquarters yet?" the latter asked, on impulse.

"Yes, he got back day before yesterday," the young ranger replied; "but
you won't find him there this morning. He walked over to the mill to
see Welton. You'd probably get him there."

Oldham waited only until Elliott had rounded the next corner, then
spurred his horse up the mountain. The significance of the detour was
now no longer in doubt, for he remembered well how and where the wagon
trail from headquarters joined the mill road. Saleratus Bill would leave
his horse out of sight on the hog-back ridge, sneak forward afoot, and
ambush his man at the forks of the road.

And now, in the clairvoyance of this guilty terror, Oldham saw as
assured facts several further possibilities. Saleratus Bill was known to
have ridden up the mill road; he, Oldham, was known to have been
inquiring after both Saleratus Bill and Orde--in short, out of wild
improbabilities, which to his ordinary calm judgment would have meant
nothing at all, he now wove a tissue of danger. He wished he had thought
to ask Elliott how long ago Orde had started out from headquarters.

The last pitch up the mountain was by necessity a fearful grade, for it
had to surmount as best it could the ledge at the crest of the plateau.
Horsemen here were accustomed to pause every fifty feet or so to allow
their mounts a gulp of air. Oldham plied lash and spur. He came out from
his frenzy of panic to find his horse,