Glenister laughed. “Speaking of whiskey, Dex—I notice that you’ve been drinking pretty hard of late—that is, hard for you.”
The old man shook his head. “You’re mistaken. It ain’t hard for me.”
“Well, hard or easy, you’d better cut it out.”
It was some time later that one of the detectives employed by the Swedes met Glenister on Front Street, and by an almost imperceptible sign signified his desire to speak with him. When they were alone he said:
“You’re being shadowed.”
“I’ve known that for a long time.”
“The district-attorney has put on some new men. I’ve fixed the woman who rooms next to him, and through her I’ve got a line on some of them, but I haven’t spotted them all. They’re bad ones—‘up-river’ men mostly—remnants of Soapy Smith’s Skagway gang. They won’t stop at anything.”
“Thank you—I’ll keep my eyes open.”
A few nights after, Glenister had reason to recall the words of the sleuth and to realize that the game was growing close and desperate. To reach his cabin, which sat on the outskirts of the town, he ordinarily followed one of the plank walks which wound through the confusion of tents, warehouses, and cottages lying back of the two principal streets along the water front. This part of the city was not laid out in rectangular blocks, for in the early rush the first-comers had seized whatever pieces of ground they found vacant and erected thereon some kind of buildings to make good their titles. There resulted a formless jumble of huts, cabins, and sheds, penetrated by no cross streets and quite unlighted. At night, one leaving the illuminated portion of the town found this darkness intensified.
Glenister knew his course so well that he could have walked it blindfolded. Nearing a corner of the warehouse this evening he remembered that the planking at this point was torn up, so, to avoid the mud, he leaped lightly across. Simultaneously with his jump he detected a movement in the shadows that banked the wall at his elbow and saw the flaming spurt of a revolver-shot. The man had crouched behind the building and was so close that it seemed impossible to miss. Glenister fell heavily upon his side and the thought flashed over him, “McNamara’s thugs have shot me.”