cked up
lots of information and imparted none. He spent some time at Folsom's
that evening. He drove out to the fort in the afternoon, "and what do
you think he wanted?" said Old Pecksniff, whose command had been cut
down to one company and the band, "wanted me to post a strong guard over
the quartermaster's depot, lest that damned marauding gang of Birdsall's
should gallop in some night with Burleigh's safe key and get away with
the funds. I asked him if those were the General's orders and he said
no. I asked him if they were anybody's orders and he said no. I asked
him if it was anybody's idea but his own and he said no, and then I told
him, by gad, I hadn't men enough to guard the public property here at
the post. The quartermaster's depot was responsible for most of them
being away, let them take care of their own."

Gate City Hotel was alive with loungers that night waiting for the
Engineer. At half-past nine he had come from the quartermaster's corral,
and after a few minutes had gone away with Mr. Folsom, who drove up in
his carriage. He was up at the old man's now, said the impatient ones,
fooling away the time with the girls when he ought to be there answering
their questions and appeasing their curiosity. The talk turned on the
probable whereabouts of Burleigh and his "pals." So had the mighty
fallen that the lately fawning admirers now spoke of the fugitive as a
criminal. He couldn't follow the Union Pacific East; everybody knew
him, and by this time officers were on the lookout for him all along the
road. He had reached Cheyenne, that was known, and had driven away from
there up the valley of Crow Creek with two companions. Loring himself
had ascertained this in Cheyenne, but it was the sheriff who gave out
the information. He was in hiding, declared the knowing ones, in some of
the haunts of Birdsall's fellows east of Laramie City, a growing town of
whose prowess at poker and keno Gate City was professionally aware and
keenly jealous. He might hide there a day or two and then get out of the
country by way of the Sweetwater along the old stage route to Salt Lake
or skip southward and make for Denver. Northward he dare not go. There
were the army posts along the Platte; beyond them the armed hosts of
Indians, far more to be dreaded than all the sheriffs' posses on the
plains. Half-past ten came and still no Loring, and the round of drinks
were getting monotonous. Judge Pardee, a bibulous and oracular limb of