“But bless your soul, man, you can’t go with me; you are as ignorant as a babe of my affairs, and I’m terribly busy and have no time to talk to you.  Oscar, that coffee scalded me.  Claiborne, if only I had time, you know, but under existing circumstances—­”

“I repeat that I’m going with you.  I don’t know why I’m in this row, and I don’t know what it’s all about, but I believe what you say about it; and I want you to understand that I can’t be put in a bag like a prize potato without taking a whack at the man who put me there.”

“But if you should get hurt, Claiborne, it would spoil my plans.  I never could face your family again,” said Armitage earnestly.  “Take your horse and go.”

“I’m going back to the valley when you do.”

“Humph!  Drink your coffee!  Oscar, bring out the rest of the artillery and give Captain Claiborne his choice.”

He picked up his sword again, flung the blade from the scabbard with a swish, and cut the air with it, humming a few bars of a German drinking-song.  Then he broke out with: 

“I do not think a braver gentleman,
More active-valiant or more valiant-young,
More daring or more bold, is now alive
To grace this latter age with noble deeds. 
For my part, I may speak it to my shame,
I have a truant been to chivalry;—­

“Lord, Claiborne, you don’t know what’s ahead of us!  It’s the greatest thing that ever happened.  I never expected anything like this—­not on my cheerfulest days.  Dearest Jules is out looking for a telegraph office to pull off the Austrian end of the rumpus.  Well, little good it will do him!  And we’ll catch him and Durand and that Servian devil and lock them up here till Marhof decides what to do with him.  We’re off!”

“All ready, sir;” said Oscar briskly.

“It’s half-past two.  They didn’t get off their message at Lamar, because the office is closed and the operator gone, and they will keep out of the valley and away from the big inn, because they are rather worried by this time and not anxious to get too near Marhof.  They’ve probably decided to go to the next station below Lamar to do their telegraphing.  Meanwhile they haven’t got me!”

“They had me and didn’t want me,” said Claiborne, mounting his own horse.

“They’ll have a good many things they don’t want in the next twenty-four hours.  If I hadn’t enjoyed this business so much myself we might have had some secret service men posted all along the coast to keep a lookout for them.  But it’s been a great old lark.  And now to catch them!”

Outside the preserve they paused for an instant.

“They’re not going to venture far from their base, which is that inn and post-office, where they have been rummaging my mail.  I haven’t studied the hills for nothing, and I know short cuts about here that are not on maps.  They haven’t followed the railroad north, because the valley broadens too much and there are too many people.  There’s a trail up here that goes over the ridge and down through a wind gap to a settlement about five miles south of Lamar.  If I’m guessing right, we can cut around and get ahead of them and drive them back here to my land.”