The winner of Claim Number One is Dr. Warren Slavens, of Kansas City, Missouri. Axel Peterson, first announced as the winner, drew Number Two.
Editor Mong had followed the tradition of the rural school of journalism in leaving the most important feature of his news for the last line. 110
“Well!” said the toolmaker. “So our doctor is the winner! But it’s a marvel that the editor didn’t turn the paper over to say so. I never saw such a botch at writing news!”
He did not know, any more than any of the thousands who read that ingenuous announcement, that Editor Mong was working his graft overtime. They did not know that he had entered into a conspiracy to deceive them before the drawing began, the clerk in charge of the stage-office and the one telephone of the place being in on the swindle.
Mong knew that the Meander stage would leave for Comanche at eight in the morning, or two hours before the drawing began. It was the only means, exclusive of the telephone, by which news could travel that day between the two places, and as it could carry no news of the drawing his scheme was secure.
Mong had feared that his extras might not move with the desired celerity during the entire day–in which expectation he was agreeably deceived–so he deliberately withheld the name of the winner of Number One, substituting for it in his first extra the name of the winner of Number Two. He believed that every person in Comanche would rush out of bed with two bits in hand for the extra making the correction, and his guess was good.
Walker and Bentley hurried back to the Hotel Metropole to find that Sergeant Schaefer had arrived ahead of them with the news. They were all up in 111 picturesque déshabillé, Horace with a blanket around him like a bald-headed brave, his bare feet showing beneath it. The camp was in a state of pleasurable excitement; but Dr. Slavens was not there to share it, nor to receive the congratulations which all were ready to offer with true sincerity.
“I wonder where he is?” questioned Horace a little impatiently.
He did not like to forego the ceremony, but he wanted to get back to bed, for a man’s legs soon begin to feel chilly in that mountain wind.
“He left here not very long ago,” said Agnes; “perhaps not more than an hour. I was just preparing to go to bed.”