Mr. Hunter started out to Colorado with ten cavalrymen and Lieutenant
Belden on the road to Denver _via_ Boulder City, to prevent the thief
(who went by the name of Durant) from getting into the mountains, and
so on to New Mexico. This trip proved fruitless. The alternative that
suggested itself was that the thief had gone another road, towards the
Smoky-Hill route. The first tidings revealed the fact to them, at the
South Platte River, that the inferior horse had been disposed of near
Godfrey's ranch on the Platte, where the writer's horse and a beautiful
Cheyenne pony had been taken by horse-thieves in the preceding summer.
The thief, hard pushed for money, had sold Mr. Woolley's horse to a man
here named Perkins, who paid thirty-five dollars, while he was worth
two hundred dollars. This he placed out of the way, some thirty miles
off, thinking him safe from discovery.

Here the utmost caution and strategy were necessary to recover this
horse they had secreted, and find out what road the rogues took with
the thoroughbred animal. But it was done. The detective came back to
Cheyenne with his escort and left it there. Then, on one of Wells,
Fargo & Co.'s fast coaches, he embarked for Denver City. A heavy
snow-storm set in and impeded the way. Thus the thief had nine days the
start.

From Denver he made the best of his way--after being detained five days
by the storm--for Sheridan, in Kansas, which was reached in five more
days' time,--the trip being made usually by railroad in forty-eight
hours. At Sheridan the cars were blockaded with snow, and quite a
number of gentlemen were snow-bound, among them the members of Congress
from New Mexico and Kansas. The detective proposed to these honorable
gents the pleasure of a tramp as far as Fort Hays, only one hundred and
thirty-five miles! All agreed, and the party set out, though the snow
was very deep.

The expedition proved to be one of much interest; but the pursuit of
the thief being the main object before us, we find the detective
arrived at Fort Harker, Kansas, and in communication with a gentleman
named Stone, who had seen the famous pacer, and had tried to buy him of
the supposed owner; and from him the detective learned that the horse
was near at hand, only twenty miles farther east, at a place called
"Saline," on a small river, in Kansas. From this place the thief
intended to convey the horse to Aurora, Illinois (his native town), to
match him there with another, a