Gasset surrendered at discretion, not suspecting the nature of the charge against him, and, having a due regard for the possibilities of escape, made no resistance which should warrant the use of the handcuffs. So all went amicably until the officer, who was less discreet than his prisoner, told Gasset for what he was wanted. At the naming of the thing the ex-house-breaker caught his breath, set his teeth upon a fiercely growled oath, smote his captor skilfully upon the point of the jaw, and made a wild dash for liberty. The policeman gave chase courageously, ignoring the broken jaw and firing ever and anon at the dodging fugitive. But Gasset made good his escape, threading the intricacies of alleys and streets in the lower town until, by the time the hue and cry was properly raised, he was free of the houses and skirting the slope of the mountain which overlooks California Gulch. Here he might have rested, but the terror of it was too new upon him. So he pushed on and always on over the bleak mountain side, doubling and twisting on his course, and cursing the snow which at day dawn would point a sure trail for his pursuers to follow. And thus running and stumbling and cursing, he came out finally in the stunted pine _chapparal_ opposite the railway station at Malta. From this point three ways were open to him. He might turn his face northward toward the new camps beyond Tennessee Pass, avoiding the railroad and trusting to the hospitality of the mountains for succour of bread and meat on the way. He might push westward over one of the passes to the sparsely settled gulches beyond the main range, but this was a still more precarious bread-and-meat hazard. Or, lastly, he might follow the railroad to the eastward, putting the chance of better speed and fewer privations against the greater risk of discovery and capture. He knew well enough that either of the foot flights would be safer than the alternative; but it was late in the season, and the early snows promised hardships a-plenty. While he was yet weighing these hardships against the perils of the easier route, an east-bound freight train crawling slowly through the Malta yards turned the scale, and dashing swiftly across the tracks he climbed catlike into an empty box car what time the train was gathering headway for the rush down the valley.