"The Governor has offered ten thousand dollars reward for Red Rogers alive. The sheriff and the United States marshal, with their deputies, are leading posses in pursuit.
"I want the honor of the capture to come to Fort Griswold. As an incentive, I promise that the reward shall be divided equally among the men who catch Red Rogers.
"Don't come back without him! Captain Smythe, you may start now."
And as the command had rung out, columns of cavalry had galloped from the post.
During the forenoon of the previous day, runners had informed each column that the outlaw had been assisted in his escape by Rose Landon, his sweetheart, and Pedro, a former member of his gang of cut-throats, and that the trio had headed straight north from Keno.
Believing that the escaped desperado was striving with all speed possible to reach the border and cross into Canada, the colonel had ordered three of the columns to ride by forced marches to the boundary and then to form a cordon; three other columns had been instructed to enter the foothills at the "Death Trail" and beat the forests as they worked North, while the seventh, as a precautionary measure, had been detailed to start the man hunt at the Southern end of the "Bad Lands."
As the outlaw's destination was the Old Stockade, which was in the Southern portion of the mountains, it was this seventh column, whose men and officers had cursed their luck at being kept from the Northern dash, that had so unexpectedly sighted the quarry.
The officer in command was Lieutenant Harry Fox, and with him at the head of the troops rode a half-breed scout whom the soldiers had dubbed Alkali, because of his insatiable thirst.
"Funny we ain't seen nothing of Jennings' patrol," the scout was saying, when suddenly his keen eyes discerned the "broken staff" signal.
Quickly communicating his discovery to his superiors, the two men spurred their horses forward and soon were in possession of Shaw's note.