“I'll give you two hundred.”
The man shook his head.
“Three hundred. Three-fifty.”
At four hundred, the man nodded, and said, “Come on over to my cabin an' weigh out the dust.”
The two squeezed their way to the door, and slipped out. After a few minutes Breck returned alone.
Harding was testifying, when Smoke saw the door shoved open slightly, and in the crack appear the face of the man who had sold the flour. He was grimacing and beckoning emphatically to some one inside, who arose from near the stove and started to work toward the door.
“Where are you goin', Sam?” Shunk Wilson demanded.
“I'll be back in a jiffy,” Sam explained. “I jes' got to go.”
Smoke was permitted to question the witnesses, and he was in the middle of the cross-examination of Harding when from without came the whining of dogs in harness, and the grind and churn of sled-runners. Somebody near the door peeped out.
“It's Sam an' his pardner an' a dog-team hell-bent down the trail for Stewart River,” the man reported.