reporter, quickly. "Going to stay until you
see how things go with him?"

She shook her head and passed on.

The sky grew darker. The reporter almost wished it might grow so dark
that the prisoner could escape unperceived, or so quickly that a random
shot could not find him. There were strange noises in camp.

The storekeeper, who never traveled except by daylight, was apparently
harnessing his mules to the wagon--he was moving the wagon itself to the
extreme left of the camp, where there was nothing to haul but wood, and
even that was still standing in the shape of fine old trees.

There seemed to be an unusual clearness in the air, for Spidertracks
distinctly heard the buzz of some earnest conversation. There seemed
strange shadows floating in the air--a strange sense of something moving
toward him--something almost shapeless, yet tangible--something that
approached him--that gave him a sense of insecurity and then of alarm.
Suddenly the indefinable something uttered a yell, and resolved itself
into a party of miners, led by the gallant and aggrieved major himself,
who shouted:

"Lynch the scoundrel, boys--that's the only thing to do!"

The excited reporter sprang to his feet in an agony of genuine humanity
and suppressed itemizing, and screamed:

"Major, wait a minute--you'll be sorry if you don't!"

But the gallant major had been at the bar for two or three hours,
preparing himself for this valorous deed, and the courage he had there
imbibed knew not how to brook delay--not until the crowd had reached the
mouth of the cave and found it dark, and had heard one unduly prudent
miner suggest that it might be well to have a light, so as to dodge
being sliced in the dark.

"Bring a light quick, then," shouted the major. "_I'll_ drag him out
when it comes; he knows _my_ grip, curse him!"

A bunch of dried grass was hastily lighted and thrown into the cave, and
the major rapidly followed it, while as many miners as could crowd in
after him hastened to do so. They found the major, with white face and
trembling limbs, standing in front of the lady for whose sake they had
done so much elaborate dressing in the morning, and who they had
afterwards wrathfully seen departing in the stage.

The major rallied, turned around, and said:

"There's some mistake here, gentlemen. Won't you have the kindness to
leave us alone?"

Slowly--very slowly--the crowd withdrew. It seemed to them that, in the
nature of things, the