While his busy thoughts teemed through his brain, and his unappreciative gaze roamed over the purpling of the distant hills, his ears, rendered unusually acute in the deep evening calm, suddenly caught the faint, distant rumble of a vehicle moving over the trail.
His quick eyes turned alertly. There was only one trail, and that was the road to Snake's Fall. The alertness of his eyes communicated itself to his body. He moved off the veranda and gazed down the trail, of which he now obtained a clear view. A team and buggy were approaching at a rapid rate, and, even at that distance, he fancied he recognized it as the one of Mike Callahan's which he had himself driven.
A wave of excitement swept over him. Could it be that——?
He went back to the veranda. The impulse to summon Mallinsbee was hard to resist. But he forced himself to calmness.
Five minutes later Mike Callahan drove up, and his team stood drooping and sweating.
"Say," he cried, in aggrieved fashion, "it jest set me whoopin' mad when that wire-tappin' operator fell into my barn with his blamed message, twenty minutes after you an' Mallinsbee had left. Look at the time of it. It had buzzed over the wire ha'f an hour before you went." Then he began to grin, and a keen light shone in his Irish eyes. "But when I see who it was from I guessed I'd need to get busy. 'Tain't in your fancy code. It's jest as plain as my face. Read it. The game's up to us. Guess it's our move next."
But Gordon was paying no attention to the Irishman. He was reading the brief message which at last set all his doubts at rest.
"Arrive Snake's Fall noon seventeenth."
It was addressed to Slosson, but there was no signature.
"That's to-morrow." Gordon's eyes lit. Then a shadow of doubt crossed his smiling face. "It's dead safe Steve hasn't sent a copy to Slosson?"