Long before the great Overland Railroad was built, there entered one day one of the largest mercantile establishments in San Francisco a handsome, athletic man, whose fresh, kindly face showed a record of barely five-and-twenty years, and whose slender fingers belied the iron strength with which he could hold and tighten the threads forming the net into which malefactors are said, sooner or later, always to run. If he _was_ a detective officer, he had friends, because he had a warm heart; and in spite of all the dark phases of life that were brought to his notice every day, he had not learned to disbelieve in the bright side, or the better instincts of humanity. The chief clerk of this establishment was Captain Herbert's (the detective officer's) most intimate friend, and he had come to bid him good-bye--perchance to charge him to guard the "fatherless and the widowed," should the trip on which he was about to start out end disastrously to him. "Early Californians" realized, better than any other class of people, the uncertainty of life--particularly with those who had to cope with the desperadoes of that time; and the captain intended to start out as usual--with the determination to do or to die. "By-the-by," said young Taylor, laughing, to the senior partner of the firm, studying the morning paper in the counting-room, "Mr. McDonald has been silent for so long that I think it would be a good job, and an economical one, to commission the captain to hunt up the junior partner of this firm, at the same time, and bring him in with the absconding cattle-agent." The old gentleman took off his glasses, and folded the paper. "Yes; it's time Harry was home. I'm really getting uneasy about him. They may have tempted him with the prospect of a whole string of wives as he passed through Salt Lake--whereas here he can have only one." "Give me his _carte-de-visite_, or the color of his hair and eyes, height, breadth, and weight, and I'll bring him, sure!" laughed the captain. "Thank you kindly, captain; but I don't know whether Mr. McDonald would appreciate your kind attentions; particularly," continued the old gentleman, "if enhanced by those little steel bracelets you bring into requisition sometimes." Twenty-four hours later the captain was hurrying, as fast as the stage-horses could run, to Salt Lake City, where, it was surmised, the dishonest cattle-agent would be found. A few hours' vigorous hunt convinced the captain that the object of his search was not there--circumstances pointing backward to one of the smaller places he had passed on his journey thither;--and the next stage that left had the captain for its occupant again. The only other passenger beside the captain and his one man, was a rather slender, well-built person, who, like himself and assistant, had both hands full, literally, to keep from being buried by the sides of bacon with which the stage was filled almost to overflowing.