Cleveland County herald., 1918-04-18
almost killed up on Bonanza?" Peter

 admitted his friend
 "Were the hammers dropped on pur- poser"
 Gordon looked at him with a grim smile. ''Your guess is just as good as mine, Peter. What do you think?"
 Peter answered seriously. q think it isn't safe for you to take the chances you do, Gordon. I find wrong inn pression about you prevalent among the men. They are blaming you for stirring up all this trouble on the out side, and they are worried for fear the mines may close and they will lose their jobs. tell you that they are in q dangerous mood"
 "Sorry, but I can't help that"
 "You can stay around town and not go out alone nights"
 q dare say can, but I'm not going to-"
 'I think you had better use a little sense, Gordon. 1 dare say I am exag- gerating the danger. But when you go around with that jaunty devil-may- care way of yours, the men think you dIC iOOhltlS IOI YOu EG likely to get it."
 Am IF"
 q know what Pm talking about. Nine out of ten of the men think you tried to murder Macdonald after you had robbed him and that your nerve weakened on the job. This seems to some of the most lawless to give them a moral right to put you out of the way. Anyhow, 1t is kind of justifica- tion, according to their point of view. I'm not defending 1t, of course. I'm telling you so that you can appreciate your danger"
 "You have done your duty, then, Peter"
 "But you don't intend to take my ad- vfceW
 ''Pll tell you what I told you last time when you warned me. Pm going through with the job I've been hired to do, just as you would stick 1t out in my place. I don't think Pm In much danger. Men in general are law-abid- ing. They growl, but they don't go as far as murder"
 Peter gave him up.
 The next issue of the Kusiak Sun contained bitter editorial attack upon Elliot. The occasion for 1t was a press dispatch from Washington to the effect that the pressure of public opin- ion had become so strong that Wfn- ton, commissioner of the general land office, might be forced to resign his place. This was a blow to the coal claimants, and the Sun charged in vitriolic language that the reports of Elliot were to blame. He was, the newspaper claimed, an enemy to all those who had come to Alaska to earn an honest living there. He was a snake in the grass, and as such every decent man ought to hold him in scorn. Elliot read this just as he was leav- 1 ing for the Willow Creek camp. He thrust the paper impatiently into his coat pocket and swung to the saddle. Why did they persecute him? He had told nothing but the truth, nothing not required of him by the simplest, ele- mental honesty. Yet he was treated as an outcast and a criminal. The in- justice of it was beginning to rankle.
 He was temperamentally an opti- mist, but depression rode with him to the gold camp and did not lift from his spirits till he started back next day for Kusiak. The news had been flashed by wire all over the United States that he was crook. His friends and relatives could give no adequate answer to the fact that an indictment hung over his head. In Alaska he was already con- victed by public opinion.
 In the late afternoon, while Gordon was still fifteen miles from Kusiak, his horse fell lame. He led it limping to the cabin of some miners.
 There were three of them, and they had been drinking heavily from jug of whisky left earlier in the day by the stage-driver. Gordon was in two minds whether to accept their surly permission to stay for the night, but the lameness of his horse decided him.
 Not caring to invite their hostility, he gave his name as Gordon instead of Elliot. He was to learn within the hour that this was mistake number two.
 From a pocket of the coat he had thrown on a bed protruded the news paper Gordon had brought from Ku- siak. One of the men, big red-head- ed fellow, pulled it out and began sulk- fly to read.
 While he read the other two bick- cred and drank and snarled at each other. All three of the men were in that stage of drunkenness when a quarrel is likely to flare up at mo- ment's notice.
 'Listen here," demanded the man with the-newspaper. "Tell you what, boys, Pm going to wiring the neck of that pussyfooting spy Elliot if I ever get chanct."
 He read aloud the editorial in the Sun. After he had finished, the oth- CTS joined him in chorus of curses.
 'T always did hate spy-and this ones murderer too. Why don't some I.. II loo Ofk kha