Nomad opened his eyes in the dark. The first thing he heard was the court-house bell.
One, two, three—— He counted the strokes. There were nine of them. Nine o’clock! Suffering catamounts! What had happened to him since seven?
Then, as his mind once more became active, he began to piece together his experiences. While he was putting on that second spur, some one must have crowded in on him through the open door and struck him from behind.
Foul play, of course! But by whom? Who could have done it if not some one of the Bernritter and Jacobs outfit?
Then Nomad recalled what Bascomb had said to Jacobs regarding the “hotel end” of their plotting. Was he, Nomad, the object of the hotel plot?
Nomad knew that he could not have been the direct object, for Jacobs and Bascomb, during their talk in the El Rio, had not known that he was on Jacobs’ trail.
And yet, somehow, the trapper was sure that he had dropped into Bascomb’s work in the hotel. Bascomb’s light-fingered men may not have meant to get Nomad at the start-off, but they had got him, nevertheless.
The trapper’s hands and feet were bound with towels, and there was a towel tied over his mouth.
Where was he? He moved his feet around, and in this way discovered that he was in cramped quarters.
The air was suffocating. Undoubtedly the miscreants who had treated him to this surprise had dragged him into the closet.