The St. Charles herald. [volume] (Hahnville, La.) 1873-1993, 1917-10-27
CHAPTER xxVII-continued

ing an escaped convict, or somethln
OF that sort? 1t gets It's local colon
CHS morning. There's u sheriff her
6rom back East OBSERVATION-DISCLOSURES Il
On the early train; names Macauley
ftnd he's got the requisition papers
But Smiths fooled him good an,
plenty."
Again the chorus united in an cage
query.
"Howf"
'.:e died last night--a little pas
.tnidnight. They say they're going 4
bury him out at the damon the jol
chat he pulled through and stood or
ats feet. One Of Williams quarrymer
idrifted In with the story just a little
while ago. I'm here to bet you even
money that the whole town goes tC
Hhe funeral"
Great gosh" said the man who
was crunching the burnt bacon. "Say
Ehat's tough, Bixby! 1 don't care what
Ne'd run away from back East; he
was man, right. Harding has been
yelling everybody how Smith wouldn't
Get the posse open fire on that gang
of hold-ups last Friday night; how h
chased across on the dam stagings
alone and unarmed to try to serve the
warrants on 'em and make 'em stop
piring. 1t was glorious, but 1t wasn't
war"
To this the other mining man added
"a hard word. Dead" he gritted
"and only 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 I'M
known 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 q grave on
the mesa behind the construction
camp; a grave among others where
The 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 q most hard-hearted lack Of the
common formalities, they said;
cheap coffin, no minister, no mourners,
not even the poor fellows business
associates in the company he had
fought so hard to save from defeat and
extinction. 1t was a 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 1t, called
forth no little comment. In the HOphra
House cafe on the evening Of the
funeral day Stryker, the mining spec
rllator, was loud in his criticisms Of
the High Line people.
"Yesv' he rallied; "a couple of 'em
will go on a junketing trip East to
'clear his memory after they've let
their 'wops' at the dam bury him like
q yellow dogl 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 a charge Of conspiracy; and
unmolested since the night
of the grand battle In which Sheriff
Harding had figured as the master OF
the hunt, had completed the great
ditch system and was installing the
in the lately finished power
house.
Over the hills from the northern
boundary Of the Timanyoni
a wandering prospector had come with
u vague tale of a new strike in Sunrise |
Gulch, q 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. |
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 young woman, clad
In serviceable khaki, and keeping her
cowboy headgear and buff top-boots IN
good countenance by riding astride IN
q mans saddle, was pushing her mount
up the trail toward Sunrise Gulch.
From the top Of little rise the aban-
doned camp came into view, its heaps
Of worked-over gravel sproutirg thick
u with the Wild growth OF twenty |