A few fitful gusts now came from the obscurity; one of them was accompanied by what seemed a flight of small startled birds crossing the road ahead of them. A second larger and more sustained flight showed his astonished eyes that they were white, and each bird an enormous flake of SNOW! For an instant the air was filled with these disks, shreds, patches,--two or three clinging together,--like the downfall shaken from a tree, striking the leather roof and sides with a dull thud, spattering the road into which they descended with large rosettes that melted away only to be followed by hundreds more that stuck and STAYED. In five minutes the ground was white with it, the long road gleaming out ahead in the darkness; the roof and sides of the wagon were overlaid with it as with a coating of plaster of Paris; the harness of the horses, and even the reins, stood out over their steaming backs like white trappings. In five minutes more the steaming backs themselves were blanketed with it; the arms and legs of the outside passengers pinioned to the seats with it, and the arms of the driver kept free only by incessant motion. It was no longer snowing; it was "snowballing;" it was an avalanche out of the slopes of the sky. The exhausted horses floundered in it; the clogging wheels dragged in it; the vehicle at last plunged into a billow of it--and stopped.
The bewildered and half blinded passengers hurried out into the road to assist the driver to unship the wheels and fit the steel runners in their axles. But it was too late! By the time the heavy wagon was converted into a sledge, it was deeply imbedded in wet and clinging snow. The narrow, long-handled shovels borrowed from the prospectors' kits were powerless before this heavy, half liquid impediment. At last the driver, with an oath, relinquished the attempt, and, unhitching his horses, collected the passengers and led them forward by a narrower and more sheltered trail toward the next stations now scarce a mile away. The led horses broke a path before them, the snow fell less heavily, but it was nearly an hour before the straggling procession reached the house, and the snow-coated and exhausted passengers huddled and steamed round the red-hot stove in the bar-room. The driver had vanished with his team into the shed; Masterton's fellow passenger on the box-seat, after a few whispered words to the landlord, also disappeared.
"I see you've got Jake Poole with you," said one of the bar-room loungers to Masterton, indicating the passenger who had just left.
"I reckon he's here on the same fool business."Masterton looked his surprise and mystification.
"Jake Poole, the deputy sheriff," repeated the other. "I reckon he's here pretendin' to hunt for Montagu Trixit like the San Francisco detectives that kem up yesterday."Masterton with difficulty repressed a start. He had heard of Poole, but did not know him by sight. "I don't think Iunderstand," he said coolly.
"I reckon you're a stranger in these parts," returned the lounger, looking at Masterton curiously. "Ef you warn't, ye'd know that about the last man San Francisco or Canada City WANTED to ketch is Monty Trixit! He knows too much and THEY know it. But they've got to keep up a show chase--a kind o' cirkis-ridin'--up here to satisfy the stockholders. You bet that Jake Poole hez got his orders--they might kill him to shut his mouth, ef they got an excuse--and he made a fight--but he ain't no such fool. No, sir!
Why, the sickest man you ever saw was that director that kem up here with a detective when he found that Monty HADN'T left the State.""Then he IS hiding about here?" said Masterton, with assumed calmness.
The man paused, lowered his voice, and said: "I wouldn't swear he wasn't a mile from whar we're talkin' now. Why, they do allow that he's taken a drink at this very bar SINCE the news came!--and that thar's a hoss kept handy in the stable already saddled just to tempt him ef he was inclined to scoot.""That's only a bluff to start him goin' so that they kin shoot him in his tracks," said a bystander.
"That ain't no good ef he has, as they SAY he has, papers stowed away with a friend that would frighten some mighty partickler men out o' their boots," returned the first speaker. "But he's got his spies too, and thar ain't a man that crosses the Divide as ain't spotted by them. The officers brag about havin' put a cordon around the district, and yet they've just found out that he managed to send a telegraphic dispatch from Black Rock station right under their noses. Why, only an hour or so arter the detectives and the news arrived here, thar kem along one o' them emigrant teams from Pike, and the driver said that a smart-lookin' chap in store-clothes had come out of an old prospector's cabin up thar on the rise about a mile away and asked for a newspaper. And the description the teamster gave just fitted Trixit to a T. Well, the information was give so public like that the detectives HAD to make a rush over thar, and b'gosh! although thar wasn't a soul passed them but a file of Chinese coolies, when they got thar they found NOTHIN',--nothin' but them Chinamen cookin' their rice by the roadside."Masterton smiled carelessly, and walked to the window, as if intent upon the still falling snow. But he had at once grasped the situation that seemed now almost providential for his inexperience and his mission. The man he was seeking was within his possible reach, if the story he had heard was true. The detectives would not be likely to interfere with his plans, for he was the only man who really wished to meet the fugitive. The presence of Poole made him uneasy, though he had never met the man before. Was it barely possible that he was on the same mission on behalf of others? IFwhat he heard was true, there might be others equally involved with the absconding manager. But then the spies--how could the deputy sheriff elude them, and how could HE?
