“I’m glad Mrs. Pollock is better,” ventured Bob.

“She’s dead,” stated Pollock without emotion.  “Died this morning about two o’clock.”

Bob cried out at the utterly unexpected shock of this statement.  Pollock looked down on him as though from a great height.

“I sort of expected it,” he answered Bob’s exclamation.  “I reckon we won’t talk of it.  ’Spose you see that Wright’s cattle is coming in again?  I’m sorry on account of Jim and the other boys.  It wipes me out, of course, but it don’t matter as far as I’m concerned, because I’m going away, anyway.”

Bob laid his hand on the man’s stirrup leather and walked alongside, thinking rapidly.  He did not know how to take hold of the situation.

“Where are you thinking of going?” he asked.

Pollock looked down at him.

“What’s that to you?” he demanded roughly.

“Why—­nothing—­I was simply interested,” gasped Bob in astonishment.

The mountaineer’s eyes bored him through and through.  Finally the man dropped his gaze.

“I’ll tell you,” said he at last, “’cause you and Jim are the only square ones I know.  I’m going to Mexico.  I never been there.  I’m going by Vermilion Valley, and Mono Pass.  If they ask you, you can tell ’em different.  I want you to do something for me.”

“Gladly,” said Bob.  “What is it?”

“Just hold my horse for me,” requested Pollock, dismounting.  “He stands fine tied to the ground, but there’s a few things he’s plumb afraid of, and I don’t want to take chances on his getting away.  He goes plumb off the grade for freight teams; he can’t stand the crack of their whips.  Sounds like a gun to him, I reckon.  He won’t stand for shooting neither.”

While talking the mountaineer handed the end of his hair rope into Bob’s keeping.

“Hang on to him,” he said, turning away.

George Pollock sauntered easily down the street.  At Supervisor Plant’s front gate, he turned and passed within.  Bob saw him walk rapidly up the front walk, and pound on Plant’s bedroom door.  This, as usual in the mountains, opened directly out on the verandah.  With an exclamation Bob sprang forward, dropping the hair rope.  He was in time to see the bedroom door snatched open from within, and Plant’s huge figure, white-robed, appear in the doorway.  The Supervisor was evidently angry.

“What in hell do you want?” he demanded.

“You,” said the mountaineer.

He dropped his hand quite deliberately to his holster, flipped the forty-five out to the level of his hip, and fired twice, without looking at the weapon.  Plant’s expression changed; turned blank.  For an appreciable instant he tottered upright, then his knees gave out beneath him and he fell forward with a crash.  George Pollock leaned over him.  Apparently satisfied after a moment’s inspection, the mountaineer straightened, dropped his weapon into the holster, and turned away.