Vernon County censor. [volume] (Viroqua, Wis.) 1865-1955, 1917-10-24
CHAPTER xxvll--contlnued.

lou re out OF 0ile, THIS lTom inc
dealer in ranches. "You know the story
that was going around about his be-
Ing an escaped convict, or something
of that sort? 1t gets its local color
this morning. There's a sheriff here
from back East somewhere-came In
on the early train; names Macauley,
and he's got the requisition papers.
But Smiths fooled him good and
plenty"
Again the chorus united In an eager
query.
"How?"
HE died last night-a little past
midnight. They say they're going to
bury him out at the damon the job
that he pulled through and stood on
fits feet. One of Williams quarrymen
drifted in with the story just little
while ago. I'm here to bet You even
money that the whole town goes TO
the funeral"
"Great gosh" said the man who
was crunching the burnt bacon. "Say,
that's tough Blxby. don't care what
he'd run away from back East; he
was a man, right. Harding has been
telling everybody how Smith wouldn't
bet the posse open fire on that gang
of hold-ups last Friday night: how he
chased across on the dam stagings
alone and unarmed to try to serve the
warrants on EN- and make 'em stop
firing. 1t was glorious, but 1t wasn't
war"
,s. =, afl, fnfn added
n hard word. dead" he gritted;
'and only a few hours earlier the girl
had taken snap judgment on him and
married somebody else! That's the
woman Of 1t !"
"Oh, hold on, Stryker." the ranch
broker protested, Don't you get too
fierce about that. There are two
strings TO that bow, and the longest
and sorriest one runs out to Colonel
Baldwin's place on Little creek. I'm
thinking. The Richlander business
was only an incident. Stanton told
me that much"
As the event proved, the seller of
ranch lands would have lost his bet on
the funeral attendance. For some un-
kno,, reason the notice of Smiths
death did not appear in the afternoon
papers, and only few people went out
in autos to see the coffin lowered by
Williams workmen into a grave on
the mesa behind the construction
camp; a grave among others where
he victims of an early industrial ac-
cident at the dam had been buried.
Those who went out from town came
back rather scandalized. There had
been a most hard-hearted lack of the
common formalities, they said;
cheap coffin, no minister, no mourners.
no. even the poor fellows business
associates in the company he had
fought so hard to save from defeat and
extinction. 1t was shame
With this report passing from lip to
lip in Brewster, another bit of gossip
to the effect that Starbuck and Still
ings had gone East with the disap-
pointed sheriff, ito clear Smiths men,
ory," as the Street-talk had Ii, called
forth no little comment. In the Hophra
House cafe on the evening of the
funeral day Stryker the mining spec
ulator. was loud in his criticisms of
the High Line people.
''Yes! :" he rallied; "a couple of 'em
will go on a junketing trip East to
clear his memory, after they've let
their 'wops' ut the dam bury him like
. yellow dog And this Richlander
woman; they say she'd knoWn him
ever since he and she were school
Kids together; she went down and
took the train with her father just
about the time they were planting the
poor devil"
Three weeks of the matchless Au-
gust weather had slipped by without
incident other than the indictment by
the grand jury of Crawford Stanton,
Barney M'Graw, and number of 9TH
ers on d charge of conspiracy; and
Williams, unmolested since the night
of the grand battle in which Sheriff
Harding had figured as the master of
thu hunt. had completed the great
ditch system and was installing the
machinery in the lately finished power
house.
over the hills from the northern
mountain boundary of the Timanyoni
n wandering prospectOr had come with
q vague tale of new strike in Sunrise
Gulch, a placer district worked out
and abandoned twenty years earlier in
the height of the Red Butte excite
ment. Questioned closely, the tale
bringer confessed that he had no proof
positive of the strike; but in the hills
he had found a well-worn trail, lately
used, leading to the old camp. and
from one of the deserted cabins in
the gulch he had seen smoke arising.
q AS to the fact of the trail the wan
dering tale-bearer was not at fault.
On the most perfect of the late-in
august mornings a young woman, clad
I'm serviceable khaki, and keeping her
cowboy headgear md buff top-bOOts in
good countenance by riding asuride IN
q mans saddle, was pushing her mount
I'D the trail toward Sunrise Gulch.
From the top of a little rise the aban-
doned camp came into view. its heaps
of worked-oveS gravel sprOutlng thick
II with the wfld esrowth of twenty
years, and its orumbling shacks, only
one Of which seemed to have survived
In habitable entirety, scattered among
the frs of the gulch.
At the top of the rise the horsewo1n-
an drev- rein end shaded her eyes