"Listen to Joe Burgoyne!" he called. "Three days no police come to Kingsburg. Three days more and lots of them come. I know the police--me. I have not watched Eagle's Nest all time for not'ing. I am goin' to quit before the police come. "When they come they find not'ing. I'm give this place to Magee, but he runs only hootch. Maybe we meet again some place and fool the police again, eh?" The crowd roared and lifted their cups. Questions were flung at Joe, as to why he was closing his place of business, but Joe ignored them. "Drink a toast to Joe Burgoyne," he invited. "Tonight the liquor is free. I make money for you; I get you lots of whisky. Now drink toast to Joe Burgoyne and his new girl." The crowd drank noisily. "W'at name, that girl?" yelled one of them. "Name?" Joe laughed. "Bimeby be Burgoyne, Pierre. Just now she's Irish. Ha, ha, ha!" Bud gasped. What did he mean? Norah Clarey was the only Irish girl in that country. Or was it only a wild boast of the egotistical half-breed? "I'm go long ways north," explained Joe. "Go too far for police to follow. And Joe Burgoyne take his girl along. The police give me two more days, and I be long ways from here." "You get married, Joe?" asked one of the cowboys. "You bet! Without priest. Ha, ha, ha, ha!" Came the sound of the trap-door being violently thrown back, a sharp exchange of words and two muddy, half-exhausted men fairly tumbled down the stairs. Swiftly they looked around. Joe was coming toward them. "Conley got away, Joe!" panted one of them. "He set fire to the cabin and got away. He killed one of the Injuns and damn near killed the other!" "_Diable!_" swore Joe. "You say that Conley got away and----" "Yes, yes! Not only that, but I think he stole the team and wagon. Me and Beaupre got there just after he escaped. We left the team about a hundred yards from the burnin' cabin, and when we came back it was gone." "The team and wagon gone?" Joe screamed, shaking the man by the shoulders. "_Mon dieu!_" He struck the man full in the face and sent him reeling against the wall. The room was in an uproar. Came a sound of someone hammering on the wall, almost directly behind Bud. One of the men shoved Bud aside and flung the door open. A man fairly fell into the room; a man who was hatless, coatless, and whose face was streaked with blood. One of the men grabbed him and held him against the bar. It was the man Bud had knocked down at the entrance to the tunnel. "Hell!" exploded a voice wonderingly. It was the other man who had carried a keg. "What does this mean?" he yelled. "Campeau comes with me to carry the whisky, and now--what does it mean?" He was peering into Campeau's face. "Somebody hit me," whined Campeau. "I wake up outside. I never bring de keg." "You no bring in the keg?" "No, I tell you. Somebody hit me----" "Where is that other man?" roared one of the crowd, "who bring in the other keg?"