“Just the same, when I get the chance, I’ll let the manager of the Double Eight Ranch know what sort of fellow Jasniff is,” Dave said to himself. “Maybe that crowd over there won’t want a prison bird around any more than we wanted him at the construction camp.”
Our hero had been right in regard to finding the pocketbook and letters. After Dave had disappeared over the edge of the cliff below the trail, Nick Jasniff had looked around to find his hat, which had fallen off in the struggle. As he picked this up he had noticed the pocketbook and the two letters.
“Maybe there’s something in that pocketbook worth keeping,” he had muttered to himself, as he tried to stop the flow of blood from his bruised nose. “And I guess I’m entitled to anything I can get from Dave Porter. I hope he broke every bone in his body by that fall.”
He waited for a minute to see if Dave would reappear, and then hurried along the trail, thinking he could find and mount our hero’s horse. He quickly transferred the forty-three dollars he found in the wallet to his own pocket, and then threw the pocketbook away in the spot where Dave picked it up.
“I guess it’s no use to look any farther,” Jasniff had muttered to himself on failing to locate the horse. “Gee! I’m glad I struck this forty-three dollars! That amount with the thirty I had before will see me a long distance on my way.”
And thereupon he had hurried back past the spot where the encounter had taken place, and then along the trail to where there was a fork—one branch leading down to the construction camp, and the other off in the direction of some mines and the nearest railroad station.
Although our hero did not know it, Jasniff had had another quarrel earlier in the day. A miner operating near the Double Eight Ranch had the night before fallen in with several of the men employed by the Mentor Construction Company, and from them had learned the particulars concerning the fellow who had gotten out of prison.
This news had been carried to James Dackley, the manager of the Double Eight, and Dackley, who was naturally a hot-headed man, had become furious over the thought of being so deceived by Jasniff.
“I only took him on because I thought he was a tenderfoot and was hard up for a job,” Dackley had growled. “He told such a straight story that I swallowed it, hook, line, and sinker. I don’t want such a fellow around here any more than they want him over to the railroad camp. Just have Nolan send him to me, and I’ll soon send him about his business.”
Thereupon Nick Jasniff had been summoned from the bunk-house to the main building on the Double Eight Ranch and been closely questioned by James Dackley. He had denied everything, but the ranch manager had refused almost to listen to him.