imes too good for you, said Folsom. Then Nevins concluded he must have
a talk with Loring, and, on his message being conveyed that officer,
the bearer was bidden to say that Mr. Loring refused to have anything
whatever to do with him, whereat the captive ex-captain ground his teeth
with rage and made the jail-yard ring with malediction. Events succeeded
each other with marvelous rapidity. Folsom's visit was early the morning
after the capture, and by noon he was bowling along on a seventy-mile
ride to the ranch in the Laramie valley, hurried thither by the news
that Birdsall's gang had run off many of his son's best horses and that
Hal Folsom himself was missing. Loring galloped by the side of the
ambulance several miles, conferring with the old frontiersman all the
way, then turned back to resume his work at the depot. Eagerly he wired
dispatches to the General, which were forwarded from Cheyenne to the
Platte, telling of his important capture, smiling quietly as he wrote.
Had he not promised to produce the mysterious Newhall himself? Admirable
service, indeed, had the young Engineer rendered. The testimony of
Folsom, Loring, Jimmy Peters and one or two wakeful citizens all proved
that there must have been a dozen of Birdsall's gang in town that night.
There could be only one explanation, for a price was on the head of
every man. They had come with "Newhall" and the key straight from some
distant lair in the Black Hills of Wyoming, the big-shouldered range
that stretches from the Laramie near its junction with the Platte
southward to Colorado. They were bent on a sudden rush upon the corral
in the dead of night, the forcing of the gate and the office door, then,
with "Newhall" to unlock the safe, they would be up and away like the
wind, with money enough to keep them all in clover--and whisky--until
the last dollar was gambled or guzzled. Loring's suspicions had proved
exactly correct. Loring's precautions in having the office brightly
lighted and a show of armed men about had held the would-be robbers at
bay during the early hours of the night, and then his prompt action in
hurling himself on the mysterious stranger who came stealthily in at
Folsom's back gate, had finally and totally blocked the game.

But, just in proportion as Loring turned out to be right, old Pecksniff
turned out to be wrong, for he had refused a guard for the depot, and
therefore was it now Pecksniff's bounden duty to himself to pooh-pooh
the pre