The doctors gave him no hope for Scot, but they now believed that his remarkable vitality would keep him alive several days. Hugh arranged to keep in touch with Baldy Green by wire. Now that the railroad was in operation he could get back to town within a few hours if an emergency call came for him.
He rode down to Reno and there boarded the Overland. A couple of hours later he left it at a small way station and engaged a saddle horse. He guessed that if the fugitives had gone to Piodie they would leave watchers to report on any strangers who might come to town. Therefore, four miles out of Piodie he left the road, took a cow trail that swung round Bald Knob, and dropped down a little gulch that led to the back of the Pony Express Corral, and under cover of dusk slipped into the stable.
Byers was there alone. “How’s Scot?” he asked.
“Bad,” said Hugh, and his haggard face twitched. “Doctor don’t think he’ll make it. What about Dutch?”
“Got in last night.”
“Dodson with him?”
The small man nodded. He was always parsimonious of words.
“Know where he is now?”
“At the Katie Brackett. Rode right out there.”
Hugh knew that this meant his enemies were playing it safe. The Katie Brackett was owned and controlled by the Dodsons. Here they were on home territory, surrounded by adherents. If a sheriff’s posse appeared on the road leading to the mine Dutch would be safely underground in one of the levels long before it reached the shaft house. There he would be as secure as a needle in a haystack. Even if the sheriff elected to search the mine, the bad man could play hide and seek with the posse in a hundred stopes, drifts, and crosscuts.