“Yes,” was the positive and quick reply of the little girl, never raising her eyes from the close scrutiny with which she had regarded the prisoner from his entrance.
“You are sure he is the man,” continued Mrs. Hayward, and the answer was as quick and as positive as before.
The other daughter, Cora, now spoke. “I know that is the man,” she said, and the mother, turning to Sheriff Cook, said slowly: “Yes, that is the man—there is no mistake.”
At this moment Joseph Seminole was brought into the room. “And there is the other,” said Mrs. Hayward—the two daughters agreeing in like words. Then Gen. Cook asked Woodruff if he desired to ask any questions to test the visitors’ belief, and received the reply, “My lawyer will do my talking.”
There was no longer any room for doubt. The two scoundrels who had killed an innocent man and who had led the officers such a chase as few criminals before or since their time ever did, had been overtaken by the Rocky Mountain Detective Association. It had been a long but a successful chase. They had been taken and securely locked in the Arapahoe county jail, where they had been fully identified and where they awaited orders from the Jefferson county authorities.
CHAPTER XX.
STIRRING CLOSE OF THE HAYWARD STORY—SEMINOLE AND WOODRUFF TAKEN TO GOLDEN AND LODGED IN JAIL—VISIT OF THE GRANGER VIGILANTES, WHO CELEBRATE CHRISTMAS BY HANGING THE MURDERERS OF THEIR LATE NEIGHBOR—DYING STATEMENTS OF THE TWO MEN—TRAGIC END OF A TRAGIC STORY.
The last chapter of this somewhat remarkable story at last opens. It is, if anything, the most thrilling of the series, as it relates the tragic end of the two men who have figured in these pages to considerable length, and with whom we began when we left Middle park in August of 1879. It is now December 28 of the same year, and the story is drawing to its close. Over three months have elapsed since Mr. Hayward, the quiet citizen and loving father and husband, was killed by these villains, but his neighbors, who knew him and appreciated his worth, had not forgotten the horror of the crime, nor allowed the passing days to carry with them their desire to avenge the great wrong that had been committed.