The telegram to the sheriff at Tonopah arrived while the sheriff was hunting down a murderer elsewhere. His deputy read the wire and speared it face down upon a bill-hook already half filled with a conglomerate mass of other communications. The deputy was not inclined to attach much significance to the message. He frequently remarked that if the sheriff’s office got all fussed up over every yarn that came in, the county would be broke inside a month paying mileage and salary to a dozen deputies. Monty had not said that a man had been murdered. He merely suspected something of the sort. The deputy slid down deeper into the armchair he liked best, cocked his feet higher on the desk and filled his pipe. Johnnywater Cañon and the possible fate of the man who had disappeared from there entered not at all into his somnolent meditations. The telegram to Patricia reached the main office in Los Angeles after five o’clock. The clerk who telephones the messages called up the office of the Consolidated Grain & Milling Company and got no reply after repeated ringing. Patricia’s telegram was therefore held until office hours the next morning. A messenger boy delivered it last, on his first trip out that way with half-a-dozen messages. The new stenographer was not at first inclined to take it, thinking there must be some mistake. The new manager was in conference with an important customer and she was afraid to disturb him with a matter so unimportant. And since she had quarreled furiously with the bookkeeper just the day before, she would not have spoken to him for anything on earth. So Patricia’s telegram lay on the desk until nearly noon. At last the manager happened to stroll into the outer office and picked up the yellow envelope which had not been opened. Being half in love with Patricia--in spite of a wife--he knew at once who “P. Connolly” was. He was a conscientious man though his affections did now and then stray from his own hearthside. He immediately called a messenger and sent the telegram back to the main office with forwarding instructions. At that time, Gary was standing before the sunny slit at the end of the crosscut, pounding doggedly with the single-jack at the corner of the rock wall. He had given up attempting to use the dulled drill as a gadget. He could no longer strike with sufficient force to make the steel bite into the rock, nor could he land the blow accurately on the head of the drill.