Stanley turned up a side street to the one-roomed adobe house on the edge of town that served as city headquarters for himself and Johnson.  He unsaddled in the little corral; he brought a feed of corn for brown Awguan; he brought currycomb and brush and made glossy Awguan’s sleek sides, turning him loose at last, with a friendly slap, to seek pasture on Cobre Hills.  Then he returned to the Mountain House for the delayed supper.

Meantime Mr. Something Dewing held a hurried consultation with Mr. Mayer Zurich; and forthwith took horse again for Morning Gate Pass, slipping by dark streets from the town, turning aside to pass Hospital Springs.  Where the arrest of the red pony had been effected, Dewing dismounted; below the trail, a dozen yards away, he fished Mr. Stanley Mitchell’s spur from under a prickly pear; and returned in haste to Cobre.

After his supper Stanley strolled into Zurich’s—­The New York Store.

Unknown to him, at that hour brown Awguan was being driven back to his little home corral, resaddled—­with Stanley’s saddle—­and led away into the dark.

Stanley exchanged greetings with the half-dozen customers who lingered at the counters, and demanded his mail.  Zurich handed out two fat letters with the postmark of Abingdon, New York.  While Stanley read them, Zurich called across the store to a purchaser of cigars and tobacco: 

“Hello, Wiley!  Thought you had gone to Silverbell so wild and fierce.”

“Am a-going now,” said Wiley, “soon as I throw a couple or three drinks under my belt.”

“Say, Bat, do you think you’ll make the morning train?  It’s going on nine now.”

“Surest thing you know!  That span of mine can stroll along mighty peart.  Once I get out on the flat, we’ll burn the breeze.”

“Come over here, then,” said Zurich.  “I want you to take some cash and send it down to the bank by express—­about eight hundred; and some checks besides.  I can’t wait for the stage—­it won’t get there till to-morrow night.  I’ve overdrawn my account, with my usual carelessness, and I want this money to get to the bank before the checks do.”

Stanley went back to his little one-roomed house.  He shaved, bathed, laid out his Sunday best, re-read his precious letters, and dropped off to dreamless sleep.

Between midnight and one o’clock Bat Wiley, wild-eyed and raging, burst into the barroom of the Admiral Dewey and startled with a tale of wrongs such part of wakeful Cobre as there made wassail.  At the crossing of Largo Draw he had been held up at a gun’s point by a single robber on horseback; Zurich’s money had been taken from him, together with some seventy dollars of his own; his team had been turned loose; it had taken him nearly an hour to catch them again, so delaying the alarm by that much.

Boots and spurs; saddling of horses; Bob Holland, the deputy sheriff, was called from his bed; a swift posse galloped into the night, joined at the last moment by Mr. Dewing, who had retired early, but had been roused by the clamor.