After he had passed the cabin, Rathburn checked his pace and proceeded more slowly up the long stretches of road to the hogback. On the hogback he began to take advantage of the screen of timber on the lower side of the road, and to ride more cautiously. However, to any one who might have been watching, his movements still would have been easily discernible, and it would have appeared that he wasn't quite sure of himself. Twice he turned off at what he appeared to think was the beginning of a trail, and both times he again turned back to the road. Then, as he reached the south end of the hogback where the trail left the road and cut straight across to the mine, two horsemen broke from the timber, and Rathburn reined in his horse as the guns which covered him glinted. The taller of the pair of night riders kept him covered with two guns while the other rode in close and jerked the weapon from his holster. "C'mon with the package!" said this man in a hoarse voice. "We won't take a chance on you. If you make any kind of a break you'll get it where it'll do most good." There was a sneering inflection in the voice. Rathburn's hand, as it moved downward toward his shirt, hovered an instant above where his good gun was stuck in his waistband, out of sight under the skirt of his coat; then it moved to the open shirt at his throat. He drew out the package and held it out toward the other. The man closed in and snatched the package, glancing at it in the dim starlight. "Now back the way you came an' don't invite no shootin'!" was the brief command. Rathburn whirled his horse and drove in his spurs. As he fled from the scene a harsh laugh came to his ears from behind. Then utter silence save for the pounding of his horse's hoofs in the hard road back down the hogback. "Jog along, hoss," Rathburn crooned as he sped down the long slopes toward town; "maybe we're peggin' things wrong, an' if it turns out that way we've a powerful long ways to go." It lacked a few minutes of being two hours after midnight when he reached the Carlisle cabin. There he reined in his horse, dismounted in the shadow of the timber, and crept to a window. The moon had risen and was bathing the hills in a ghostly light in which every object stood out clear-cut and easily distinguishable. Rathburn peered into the two front windows, but could see nothing. Then, from a side window into which the moonlight filtered, he made out a bedroom. It was not occupied. From the other side of the cabin he saw another bedroom, and it, too, was unoccupied. "Nobody home," he muttered cheerfully as he ran for his horse. In another minute he was again speeding down the road toward town. He slacked his pace as he reached the upper end of the short main street. The street was dark save for two beams of yellow light, one of which shone from a window of the jail office and the other from the front of the Red Feather resort.