The alarm was spread throughout the United States and Canada, to the British Isles, and the Continental ports, and to Mexico and the Central American border and port cities, where it was believed the fugitive might make his appearance. But Crowe was not apprehended, and the quest soon settled down to its routine phases, with occasional lapses back into exciting alarms. Every little while the capture of Pat Crowe was reported, and on at least a dozen occasions men turned up with confessions and detailed descriptions of the kidnapping. These apparitions and alleged captures took place in such diffused spots as London, Singapore, Manila, Guayaquil, San Francisco, and various obscure towns in the United States and Canada. The genuine and authentic Pat Crowe, however, stoutly declined to be one of the captives or confessors, and so the hunt went on. [Illustration: _Wide World_ ~~ PAT CROWE ~~] Meantime Crowe’s confederate, an ex-brakeman on the Union Pacific Railroad, had been taken and brought to trial. His name was James Callahan, and there was then and is now no question about his connection with the affair. Nevertheless, at the end of his trial on April 29, 1901, Callahan was acquitted, and Judge Baker, the presiding tribune, excoriated the jury for neglect of duty, saying that never had evidence more clearly indicated guilt. Attempts to convict Callahan on other counts were no better starred, and he had finally to be released. In the same year, 1901, word was received from Crowe through an attorney he had employed in an earlier difficulty. Crowe had sent this barrister a draft from Capetown, South Africa, in payment of an old debt. The much sought desperado had got through the lines to the Transvaal, joined the Boer forces, and had been fighting against the British. He had been twice wounded, decorated for distinguished courage, and was, according to his own statement, done with crime and living a different life--adventurous, but honest. So many canards had been exploded that Omaha refused to believe the story, albeit time proved it to be true. At the height of the excitement, rewards of fifty-five thousand dollars had been offered for the capture and conviction of Pat Crowe, thirty thousand by Cudahy and twenty-five thousand by the city of Omaha. This huge price on the head of this wandering bad man had, of course, contributed to the feverish and half-worldwide interest in the case. Yet even these fat inducements accomplished nothing.