“It came here last night, addressed to you, sir,” exclaimed Mrs. Vacca. “We were sure it wasn’t any of your furniture, so we didn’t open it.”
“Oh, maybe it’s a wedding present,” exclaimed Hilma, her eyes sparkling.
“Well, maybe it is,” returned her husband. “Here, m’son, help me in with this.”
Annixter and young Vacca bore the case into the sitting-room of the house, and Annixter, hammer in hand, attacked it vigorously. Vacca discreetly withdrew on signal from his mother, closing the door after him. Annixter and his wife were left alone.
“Oh, hurry, hurry,” cried Hilma, dancing around him.
“I want to see what it is. Who do you suppose could have sent it to us? And so heavy, too. What do you think it can be?”
Annixter put the claw of the hammer underneath the edge of the board top and wrenched with all his might. The boards had been clamped together by a transverse bar and the whole top of the box came away in one piece. A layer of excelsior was disclosed, and on it a letter addressed by typewriter to Annixter. It bore the trademark of a business firm of Los Angeles. Annixter glanced at this and promptly caught it up before Hilma could see, with an exclamation of intelligence.
“Oh, I know what this is,” he observed, carelessly trying to restrain her busy hands. “It isn’t anything. Just some machinery. Let it go.”
But already she had pulled away the excelsior. Underneath, in temporary racks, were two dozen Winchester repeating rifles.
“Why—what—what—” murmured Hilma blankly.
“Well, I told you not to mind,” said Annixter. “It isn’t anything. Let’s look through the rooms.”
“But you said you knew what it was,” she protested, bewildered. “You wanted to make believe it was machinery. Are you keeping anything from me? Tell me what it all means. Oh, why are you getting—these?”
She caught his arm, looking with intense eagerness into his face. She half understood already. Annixter saw that.
“Well,” he said, lamely, “you know—it may not come to anything at all, but you know—well, this League of ours—suppose the Railroad tries to jump Quien Sabe or Los Muertos or any of the other ranches—we made up our minds—the Leaguers have—that we wouldn’t let it. That’s all.”
“And I thought,” cried Hilma, drawing back fearfully from the case of rifles, “and I thought it was a wedding present.”
And that was their homecoming, the end of their bridal trip. Through the terror of the night, echoing with pistol shots, through that scene of robbery and murder, into this atmosphere of alarms, a manhunt organising, armed horsemen silhouetted against the horizons, cases of rifles where wedding presents should have been, Annixter brought his young wife to be mistress of a home he might at any moment be called upon to defend with his life.
The days passed. Soon a week had gone by. Magnus Derrick and Osterman returned from the city without any definite idea as to the Corporation’s plans. Lyman had been reticent. He knew nothing as to the progress of the land cases in Washington. There was no news. The Executive Committee of the League held a perfunctory meeting at Los Muertos at which nothing but routine business was transacted. A scheme put forward by Osterman for a conference with the railroad managers fell through because of the refusal of the company to treat with the ranchers upon any other basis than that of the new grading. It was impossible to learn whether or not the company considered Los Muertos, Quien Sabe, and the ranches around Bonneville covered by the test cases then on appeal.
Meanwhile there was no decrease in the excitement that Dyke’s holdup had set loose over all the county. Day after day it was the one topic of conversation, at street corners, at crossroads, over dinner tables, in office, bank, and store. S. Behrman placarded the town with a notice of $500.00 reward for the ex-engineer’s capture, dead or alive, and the express company supplemented this by another offer of an equal amount. The country was thick with parties of horsemen, armed with rifles and revolvers, recruited from Visalia, Goshen, and the few railroad sympathisers around Bonneville and Guadalajara. One after another of these returned, empty-handed, covered with dust and mud, their horses exhausted, to be met and passed by fresh posses starting out to continue the pursuit. The sheriff of Santa Clara County sent down his bloodhounds from San Jose—small, harmless-looking dogs, with a terrific bay—to help in the chase. Reporters from the San Francisco papers appeared, interviewing everyone, sometimes even accompanying the searching bands. Horse hoofs clattered over the roads at night; bells were rung, the Mercury issued extra after extra; the bloodhounds bayed, gun butts clashed on the asphalt pavements of Bonneville; accidental discharges of revolvers brought the whole town into the street; farmhands called to each other across the fences of ranch-divisions—in a word, the countryside was in an uproar.
And all to no effect. The hoof-marks of Dyke’s horse had been traced in the mud of the road to within a quarter of a mile of the foothills and there irretrievably lost. Three days after the holdup, a sheepherder was found who had seen the highwayman on a ridge in the higher mountains, to the northeast of Taurusa. And that was absolutely all. Rumours were thick, promising clues were discovered, new trails taken up, but nothing transpired to bring the pursuers and pursued any closer together. Then, after ten days of strain, public interest began to flag. It was believed that Dyke had succeeded in getting away. If this was true, he had gone to the southward, after gaining the mountains, and it would be his intention to work out of the range somewhere near the southern part of the San Joaquin, near Bakersfield. Thus, the sheriffs, marshals, and deputies decided. They had hunted too many criminals in these mountains before not to know the usual courses taken. In time,
