“But I have had no dispatch from Stacy,” said Demorest in surprise.  “He was to telegraph to me from San Francisco in any emergency.”

“He never got there at all,” said Barker.  “Jack ran slap into Van Loo at the Divide, and sent a dispatch to Jim, which stopped him halfway until Jack could reach him, which he nearly broke his neck to do; and then Jack finished up by bringing a message from Stacy to us that we should all meet together on the slope of Heavy Tree, near the Bar.  I met Jack just as I was riding into the Divide, and came back with him.  He will tell you the rest, and you can swear by what Jack says, for he’s white all through,” he added, laying his hand affectionately on Hamlin’s shoulder.

Hamlin winced slightly.  For he had not told Barker that his wife was with Van Loo, nor his first reason for interfering.  But he related how he had finally overtaken Van Loo at Canyon Station, and how the fugitive had disclosed the conspiracy of Steptoe and Hall against the bank and Marshall as the price of his own release.  On this news, remembering that Stacy had passed the Divide on his way to the station, he had first sent a dispatch to him, and then met him at the first station on the road.  “I reckon, gentlemen,” said Hamlin, with an unusual earnestness in his voice, “that he’d not only got my telegram, but all the news that had been flying around this morning, for he looked like a man to whom it was just a ‘toss-up’ whether he took his own life then and there or was willing to have somebody else take it for him, for he said, ’I’ll go myself,’ and telegraphed to have the surveyor stopped from coming.  Then he told me to tell you fellows, and ask you to come too.”  Jack paused, and added half mischievously, “He sort of asked me what I would take to stand by him in the row, if there was one, and I told him I’d take—­whiskey!  You see, boys, it’s a kind of off-night with me, and I wouldn’t mind for the sake of old times to finish the game with old Steptoe that I began a matter of five years ago.”

“All right,” said Demorest, with a kindling eye; “I suppose we’d better start at once.  One moment,” he added.  “Barker boy, will you excuse me if I speak a word to Hamlin?” As Barker nodded and walked to the rails of the veranda, Demorest took Hamlin aside, “You and I,” he said hurriedly, “are single men; Barker has a wife and child.  This is likely to be no child’s play.”

But Jack Hamlin was no fool, and from certain leading questions which Barker had already put, but which he had skillfully evaded, he surmised that Barker knew something of his wife’s escapade.  He answered a little more seriously than his wont, “I don’t think as regards his wife that would make much difference to him or her how stiff the work was.”

Demorest turned away with his last pang of bitterness.  It needed only this confirmation of all that Stacy had hinted, of what he himself had seen in his brief interview with Mrs. Barker since his return, to shake his last remaining faith.  “We’ll all go together, then,” he said, with a laugh, “as in the old times, and perhaps it’s as well that we have no woman in our confidence.”