“We’ll go down and look round,” said Shepard. “How do ye work this thing, Gabe? Hanged if I knowed you had an elevator hyer. What you use it fer?”
“I keep whisky barrels and the like down there,” the saloon keeper explained. “I put ’em in, and get ’em out with this elevator.”
“Oh, I see!”
As many as could crowded into the elevator and were lowered by Gopher Gabe to the cellar.
This time the timber above did not come down. Some unobserved touch of the hand of the saloon keeper stayed it in place.
When the cellar was gained and entered, the sheriff flashing round it the light of the lamp he had brought, no wounded or dead man was seen in it; there were no evidences of the fight.
It looked, at first blush, as if the scout had been dreaming. If he had not been able to show spots on the walls where bullets had struck, many men there would have gone away believing that he had lied.
The manhole was found closed.
“I don’t see nothin’, though, of the men,” said Shepard, disappointed.