en the two began that last relay. It was four o'clock
in the afternoon when they arrived amid the outskirts of the scattered
prairie terminus which was their destination. Within ten minutes
thereafter the two had separated. The older man, in charge of a lank,
unshaven frontiersman, chiefly noticeable from a quid of tobacco which
swelled one cheek like an abscess, and a nickle-plated star which he
wore on the lapel of his coat, was headed for the pretentious white
painted building known as the court-house. The younger, catching sight
of a wind-twisted sign lettered "Hotel," made for it as though sighting
the promised land. In the office, as he passed through, was a crowd of
men entirely too large to have gathered by chance in a frontier
hostelry, who eyed him peculiarly; but he took no notice, and five
minutes later, upon the bedraggled bed of the unplastered upper room
that the landlord gave him, without even his boots removed, he was deep
in the realm of oblivion.

Some time later--he had no idea of the hour save that all was dark--he
was awakened by a confusion of voices in the room below, a slamming of
doors, a thumping of great boots upon the bare floor. Scarcely
remembering his whereabouts, he rolled from his bed and thrust his head
out of the narrow window. Here and there about the town were scattered
lights--some stationary, others, which he took to be lanterns, moving.
On the street beneath his window two men went by on a run. Half way up
the block, before the well-lighted front of a saloon, a motley crowd was
shifting back and forth, restless as ants in a hill, the murmur of their
voices sounding menacing as the distant hum of swarming bees. All at
once from out the door there burst fair into the crowd a heavy man with
great shoulders and a bull neck. About him, even in the uncertain light,
there seemed to the watcher something very familiar. What he said, Ben
could not understand; but he turned his head this way and that, and his
motions were unmistakable. The crowd made way before him as sheep before
a dog, and closing behind followed steadily in his wake. Gradually as
the leader advanced the mass gained momentum. At first the pace had been
a slow walk. In the space of seconds it became a swift one, then a run,
with a wild scramble by those in the rear to gain front place. The
frozen ground rumbled under their rushing feet. The direction of their
movement, at first uncertain, became definite. It was a direct l