"They got him over here to where we're goin--Goldpan. He held up some fellers that's got a mine called the Craw Door, or somethin' like that. Fetched three of his pals from Denver with him. They called 'emselves miners! God! Miners nothin'! They'd worked around Cripple Creek long enough to get union cards, but two of 'em was prize fighters, and the other used to be bouncer at the old Alcazar when she was the hottest place to lose money that ever turned a crooked card. I remember there one time when----" "Nobody asked you about that," growled the other man. "What I'm interested in is about this big stiff, Thompson." "Him? Oh, yes. Where was I? Well, he fixed things for a hold-up. Was goin' to get these fellers at the Craw Door to untie their pokes, but they don't stand for it. He packs a meetin' with a lot of swampers that don't know nothin' about the case, and before they gets done they votes a strike, and an old feller from this Craw Door gets his time. Gets kicked to death, the same as they uster in Park City when the Cousin Jacks from the Ontario cut loose on one another. The Denver council takes cawgnizance of this, and investigates. It snoops around till it gets the goods. Then--_wow! bing!_ goes this here Thompson. They sue him themselves, and now he's up in Canon City, a-lookin' plaintive like through these things." He held his knotted, rough fingers open before his face, and jerked his head sideways, simulating a man peering through penitentiary bars. Then, with a roar, he started in to bellow, "The union forever--hooraw, boys hooraw!" in which his companion, forgetting all the story, joined until it was again time to tilt the wicker-covered jug. And so that was the end of Thompson and presumably the strike, Dick thought, as he settled back into the corner he had claimed. And it was easy to see, with this damning evidence to be brought forward, that Bells Park's murderers would pay, to the full, the penalty. For them, on trial, it meant nothing less than life. He was human enough to be glad. The stage rattled into Goldpan, and, stiff and sore from his journey, he began his tramp toward the trail of the cut-off leading homeward: He stopped but once. It was in front of the High Light, where a small scrap of paper still clung to the plate glass. On it was written, in a hurried, but firm and womanly, handwriting: This place is closed for good. It is not for sale. It has held hell. Hereafter it shall hold nothing but cobwebs. LILY MEREDITH. The date was that of the tragic night, the night when Bells Park, fighting for those on whom he had bestowed a queer, distorted affection, had been kicked to death by the ruffians now cowering in a distant jail!