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"Plenty! Plenty!" exclaimed the carrier. "Lived here nigh onto forty year, man an' boy, an' never seen such work before in all my life." "How's that?" questioned the farmer, scenting something interesting. "Ol' man Baggs's murdered last night," announced the carrier, watching eagerly for the effect of his announcement. "Gosh!" gasped Willie Case. "Was he shot?" It was almost a scream.
They halted to take counsel on the suspicious-looking posse far below them, and while their cruelly exhausted horses rested, Du Sang, always in Sinclair's absence the brains of the gang, planned the escape over Deep Creek at Baggs's crossing.
The night was hot and moonless, Mosquitoes abundant, and in trampling and scrambling through the gloomy woods the hunters had plenty of small troubles, but they did not mind that so long as Turk was willing to do his part. Once or twice he showed signs of interest in the trail, but soon decided against it. Thus they worked toward the Widdy Baggs's till they came to a dry brook bed.
Du Sang answered: "No; we're from Sheriff Coon's office at Oroville, looking up a bunch of Duck Bar steers that's been run somewhere up Deep Creek. Can we stay here all night?" They dismounted and disarmed Baggs's suspicions, though the condition of their horses might have warned him had he had his senses.
"What is it, Bob?" he asked hastily. "Indians?" "Indians?" echoed Bob scornfully. "I guess not this time. I've heard of Indians stealing pretty nearly everything on earth but not this. No Indian in this country, not even Turkey Leg, ever stole a locomotive." "What do you mean?" "I mean Dan Baggs's engine is gone." Bucks's face turned blank with amazement. "Gone?" he echoed incredulously.
His pursuers yelled, and with one more push the railing crashed forward and the confidence man sprang for the engineer. Baggs ran back to where Bucks stood before his table, and the latter, clutching his revolver, warned Baggs's pursuers not to lay a hand on him. Defying the single-handed defender, the gambler whipped out his own pistol to put an end to the fight.
"The ceremony won't take a minute," I answered; "and I'll give you your five-pound note and open the door the moment it's over. Bear witness," I went on, drowning Mrs. Baggs's expostulations with the all-important marriage-words, "that I take this woman, Alicia Dulcifer for my lawful wedded wife." "In sickness and in health, in poverty and wealth," broke in Mrs.
Moreover, he never hesitated to announce that when "they didn't like the way he ran his engine they could get somebody else to run it." Baggs's great failing was that, while he often ran his train too fast, he wasted so much time at stations that he was always late.
It was a hard country and too close to Williams Cache for comfort, but Dan got on with everybody because the toughest man in the Cache country could get a meal, a feed for his horse, and a place to sleep at Baggs's, without charge, when he needed it. Ed Banks, by hard riding, got to the crossing at five o'clock, and told Baggs of the hold-up and the shooting of Oliver Sollers.
At dusk they divided: two men lurking in the brush along the creek rode as close as they could, unobserved, toward the crossing, while Du Sang and the cowboy Karg, known as Flat Nose, rode down to Baggs's ranch at the foot of the pass.
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