Instinctively he tried to lift himself, only to drop in an awkward huddle, with a blaze of shooting stars criss-crossing before his eyes. Then the bright lights faded, and Nixon J. Peters quietly went to sleep.
V.
When Peters awoke, he found himself on a bench in the railroad station. A local train was expected, and there had been men on the station platform when Peters shot over the railroad embankment and hit the tracks. Three or four of the men went forward to investigate the strange phenomenon, and they were the ones who had brought Peters into the waiting room. They had no more than laid him down, and stripped off his skis, when he opened his eyes.
“Sheriff gone to the dry wash yet?” he inquired faintly.
A man bent over him. “I’m Jordan, the sheriff,” said he. “What dry wash do you mean? Why should I go there?”
“Has—hasn’t Markham reached town?” went on Peters.
“Haven’t seen a thing of Markham. Oh!” Jordan exclaimed. “I know you now. You are Bailey’s man, Peters, from the Morton Ranch. Why were you sliding into town, at this time o’ night, on a pair of skis? Thunder! It was as much as your life was worth! You——”
“A gang of horse thieves ran off our horses—more’n fifty of ’em,” cut in Peters wildly. “It happened early in the evening. Get a posse, Jordan, and head off the gang at Long Knife Dry Wash. When Markham shows up, leave somebody in town to arrest him. He shot me in the arm. And send a doctor to Morton’s to look after Bailey. He’s wounded, too! I——”
Then Peters went to sleep again. When he next came to himself, and picked up the chain of events, he was in a bed in a room at the Roscommon House. Broad day looked in at the room windows, and Peters could gaze dreamily out at roofs covered with snow, and sparkling under the sun’s rays as though covered with diamonds. Hours had passed since he had had the brief awakening in the railroad station. Now he was in a comfortable bed, his left arm neatly bandaged, and Toynbee, the proprietor of the hotel, was sitting beside him.