On arriving at Auntie Belle's, Bob resolved to push on up the mountain that very night, instead of waiting as usual until the following morning. Accordingly, after supper, he saddled his horse, collected the camp mail, and set himself in motion up the steep road.
Before he had passed Fern Falls, the twilight was falling. Hermit thrushes sang down through the cooling forest. From the side hill, exposed all the afternoon to the California summer sun, rose tepid odours of bear-clover and snowbush, which exhaled out into space, giving way to the wandering, faint perfumes of night. Bob took off his hat, and breathed deep, greatly refreshed after the long, hot stage ride of the day. Darkness fell. In the forest the strengthening moonlight laid its wand upon familiar scenes to transform them. New aisles opened down the woodlands, aisles at the end of which stood silvered, ghostly trees thus distinguished by the moonbeams from their unnumbered brethren. The whole landscape became ghostly, full of depths and shadows, mysteries and allurements, heights and spaces unknown to the more prosaic day. Landmarks were lost in the velvet dark; new features sprang into prominence. Were it not for the wagon trail, Bob felt that in this strange, enchanted, unfamiliar land he might easily have become lost. His horse plodded mechanically on. One by one he passed the homely roadside landmarks, exempt from the necromancies of the moon—the pile of old cedar posts, split heaven knows when, by heaven knows whom, and thriftlessly abandoned; the water trough, with the brook singing by; the S turn by the great boulders; the narrow defile of the Devil's Grade—and then, still under the spell of the night, Bob surmounted the ridge to look out over the pine-clad plateau slumbering dead-still under the soft radiance of the moon.
He rode the remaining distance to headquarters at a brisker pace. As he approached the little meadow, and the group of buildings dark and silent, he raised joyously the wild hallo of the late-comer with mail. Immediately lights were struck. A moment later, by the glimmer of a lantern, he was distributing the coveted papers, letters and magazines to the half-dressed group that surrounded him. Amy summoned him to bring her share. He delivered it to the hand and arm extended from the low window.
"You must be nearly dead," said Amy, "after that long stage ride—to come right up the mountain."
"It's the finest sort of a night," said Bob. "I wouldn't have missed it for anything. It's H-O-T, hot, down at the Flats. This ride just saved my life."
This might have been truer than Bob had thought, for at almost that very moment Saleratus Bill, having successfully shaken off his pursuers, was making casual and guarded inquiries at Austin's saloon. When he heard that Orde had arrived at the Flats on the evening's stage, he manifested some satisfaction. The next morning, however, that satisfaction vanished, for only then he learned that the young man must be already safe at headquarters.
XXVI
In delivering his instructions to Oldham, Baker had, of course, no thought of extreme measures. Indeed, had the direct question been put to him, he would most strongly and emphatically have forbidden them. Nevertheless, he was glad to leave his intentions vague, feeling that in thus wilfully shutting his eyes he might avoid personal responsibility for what might happen. He had every confidence that Oldham—a man of more than average cultivation—while he might contemplate lawlessness, was of too high an order to consider physical violence. Baker was inclined to believe that on mature reflection Bob would yield to the accumulation of influence against him. If not, Oldham intimated with no uncertain confidence, that he possessed information of a sort to coerce the Forest officer into silence. If that in turn proved unavailing—a contingency, it must be remembered that Baker hardly thought worth entertainment—why, then, in some one of a thousand perfectly legal ways Oldham could entangle the chief witness into an enforced absence from the trial. This sort of manoeuvre was, later, actually carried out in the person of Mr. Fremont Older, a witness in the graft prosecutions of San Francisco. In short, Baker's intentions, while desperately illegal, contemplated no personal harm to their victim. He gave as general orders to his subordinate: "Keep Orde's testimony out of court"; and shrugged off minute responsibilities.