“It’s worth a goodly price to show you how a truss-up feels,” Pape interrupted. “Of course I can’t hope you’ll stay caved much longer than I, once the gang misses you. But I won’t have trouble re-pinching you, not while I hold these certificates of your guilt. To think, Jane, that my trail’s-end should run into yours this way! It looks—don’t get scared, now—but it does look a whole lot like Fate.” She regarded him, serious-eyed, yet with faintly smiling lips. “It looked a whole lot like that to me the day you told dad and me about your search for——” The suggestion of a smile vanished as she turned directly toward the wretched-looking little big man. “Wasn’t ‘Montana Gusher’ the name of that oil stock you stopped Aunt Helene’s buying, Judge Allen? Ah, I thought so!” With a glance of contempt for the obviously guilty “family friend,” she followed Pape out of the cave. From the shadow of the wall they looked out over the flat. “We can’t continue Western style,” he observed with manifest regret. “See the mounties? They’re here under instructions to report to his Honor the Judge and do his bidding. There’s a limit, as I learned awhile back, to what one can tackle in Gotham single-handed—that is to say, with hope of success. We’ll need an injunction to stop that stunt. Let’s go get it!” Almost were they across the open space which they must cover to reach their horses when a shouted command to halt told that Allen’s gang had sighted them. Instead of obeying, Pape snatched Jane’s hand and urged her into a run. They gained a moment in the one lost to the enemy while Swinton Welch explained to the police lieutenant the necessity of capturing them. They reached their mounts, climbed their saddles and were on their way before the pursuit started from the far side of the flat. A second time that afternoon the consecrated precinct of Gotham’s pleasure place staged a race—this one quite official, with former pursuers turned quarry. CHAPTER XXV—HUNTERS HUNTED Really surprising was the detailed topographical knowledge which the western trail-blazer had acquired during recent adventures. He picked their way through the tumbled terrain of the park heights as if from a map. That he knew the up-and-down maze better than the officers now after them was demonstrated when they gained the path that represents the ultimate democracy of horsemanship by a scramble down a rocky slope with none of the pack in sight. His immediate objective he confided to Jane in case accident should separate them. A moment of straight riding would take them through the Womens Gate into West Seventy-second Street. There he would slip into the Hotel Majestic and a telephone booth to enlist legal reënforcements.