"Thanks!" They ran across the spur tracks in the faint light of a dirty incandescent, gleaming from above. A greasy being faced them and Bardwell, the sheriff, shouted his mission.
"Got to catch some people that are making a get-away through Center City. Can you send us up in the skip?"
"Yes, two at a time."
"All right!" The sheriff turned to Harry. "You and I 'll go on the first trip and hurry for the Ohadi road. Fairchild and Miss Richmond will wait for the second and go to Sheriff Mason's office and tell him what's up. Meet us there," he said to Fairchild, as he went forward. Already the hoist was working; from far above came the grinding of wheels on rails as the skip was lowered. A wave of the hand, then Bardwell and Harry entered the big, steel receptacle. At the wall the greasy workman pulled three times on the electric signal; a moment more and the skip with its two occupants had passed out of sight.
A long wait followed while Fairchild strove to talk of many things,—and failed in all of them. Things were happening too swiftly for them to be put into crisp sentences by a man whose thoughts were muddled by the fact that beside him waited a girl in a whipcord riding suit—the same girl who had leaped from an automobile on the Denver highway and—
It crystallized things for him momentarily.
"I 'm going to ask you something after a while—something that I 've wondered and wondered about. I know it was n't anything—but—"
She laughed up at him.
"It did look terrible, didn't it?"
"Well, it would n't have been so mysterious if you had n't hurried away so quick. And then—"