“Two hours, anyway.  Well, you needn’t tell me if you don’t want to, but it’s quite easy to see that something is worrying you.”

Alton concealed his astonishment.  “I’ve had things to think about,” said he.  “Wasn’t there a paper you took from Damer?”

“Oh, yes,” and Horton flung him several crumpled sheets across.  “Nothing much to be made of that.  It has been given him to send cipher telegrams with.”

Alton glanced at the paper with apparently vague curiosity, but his brain was busy and he had a good memory.

“I think I’d let the folks in Vancouver have it,” he said with a yawn.  “Now I want a few hours’ rest, because we’re going back at sun up to restake the claim.”

Horton looked thoughtful.  “I’m not quite sure you could hold it.  It hasn’t been declared open.”

Alton laughed a little.  “Well, I think I can,” he said.  “Damer hadn’t got his patent, anyway, and it’s scarcely likely that the man who sent him will protest against me.”

Then he slowly strolled away, but once the door closed behind him moved with quick resolute steps to his room.  There he sat busy with pen and paper for several minutes, and then descending softly found Okanagan in the store.

“Get your horse as quietly as you can, and ride in to the railroad with this message as if the devil was after you,” he said.

Okanagan stretched himself sleepily.  “Horton’s sending in at sun up.”

“Yes,” said Alton dryly.  “I want my message on the wires some hours before his, but nobody need know of it beyond you and me.”

Okanagan nodded, and in another five minutes Alton looked into the room where Horton was still writing.

“I fancied I heard somebody riding down the trail, but it’s not quite easy being a magistrate, and my head’s got kind of mixed,” said the latter.  “Still, I’ve nearly got this thing fixed, and if the folks down in Vancouver don’t fool over it, when Hallam hears what’s happened to his partner he’ll be under lock and key.”

“Oh, yes,” said Alton.  “We’ll hope for the best, though that man’s kind of slippery.”

In the meanwhile Tom of Okanagan was riding at a gallop down the trail, with the thin mist whirling by him and the stars above him growing dim, and there were several leagues between him and the settlement when daylight crept slowly into the valley.  Thus it happened that Horton’s dispatches to the police at Vancouver were not the first that left the station, and that evening Deringham, who was sitting with his daughter on the verandah of Forel’s house, turned from the girl with a little closing of his lips as he saw Hallam coming up the pathway.  His movements suggested nervous haste, and though he was usually neat in dress, his unbuttoned coat had evidently been flung on, while the glance he cast behind him towards the wharf where one of the Sound steamers was about to sail savoured of apprehension.  This did not escape Alice Deringham.