She shook her head and passed on.
The sky grew darker. The reporter almost wished it might grow so dark that the prisoner could escape unperceived, or so quickly that a random shot could not find him. There were strange noises in camp.
The storekeeper, who never traveled except by daylight, was apparently harnessing his mules to the wagon—he was moving the wagon itself to the extreme left of the camp, where there was nothing to haul but wood, and even that was still standing in the shape of fine old trees.
There seemed to be an unusual clearness in the air, for Spidertracks distinctly heard the buzz of some earnest conversation. There seemed strange shadows floating in the air—a strange sense of something moving toward him—something almost shapeless, yet tangible—something that approached him—that gave him a sense of insecurity and then of alarm. Suddenly the indefinable something uttered a yell, and resolved itself into a party of miners, led by the gallant and aggrieved major himself, who shouted:
"Lynch the scoundrel, boys—that's the only thing to do!"
The excited reporter sprang to his feet in an agony of genuine humanity and suppressed itemizing, and screamed:
"Major, wait a minute—you'll be sorry if you don't!"
But the gallant major had been at the bar for two or three hours, preparing himself for this valorous deed, and the courage he had there imbibed knew not how to brook delay—not until the crowd had reached the mouth of the cave and found it dark, and had heard one unduly prudent miner suggest that it might be well to have a light, so as to dodge being sliced in the dark.
"Bring a light quick, then," shouted the major. "I'll drag him out when it comes; he knows my grip, curse him!"
A bunch of dried grass was hastily lighted and thrown into the cave, and the major rapidly followed it, while as many miners as could crowd in after him hastened to do so. They found the major, with white face and trembling limbs, standing in front of the lady for whose sake they had done so much elaborate dressing in the morning, and who they had afterwards wrathfully seen departing in the stage.