“No!” said Maverick Joe, a little man, wiry, dark-faced and with eyes full of fox-like cunning. “You don’t lose freight in Cut-throat, Jack. Suthin’ else took you down thar.” “Suthin’ else did,” confessed Jack. “But I didn’t get it.” “Who did you see?” “Old Tom.” The crowd started. “He’s come back as big as life, an’ as onery as ever.” Maverick Joe stepped hack. His little eyes were burning like twin stars. “Tom Terror has come back. Do you hear that, boys?” The Vigilantes had heard, and as they gathered around their leader, the air seemed to become blue with oaths and threats of vengeance. Maverick Joe walked through the crowd with a determined purpose written on his countenance. Twenty eager men were at his heels. The men separated, each to saddle his horse. Maverick Joe re-entered the hotel; but the place where Old Jack had lain was vacant. “They took him down to his horses,” explained a man. “He’s got a bed there, and you know the stable is as good as many a house in Custer. He got delirious after you went out and raved about a bonanza bigger than the Emma King. It must have had something to do with his trip to Cut-throat, for he mixed Tom Terror and the big bonanza together all the time.” The captain of the Vigilantes went out, and bent his steps toward Old Jack’s stable. Maverick Joe paused at the door and listened; but, not hearing any noise, he went in. A lantern that hung on a nail afforded the light that revealed the interior. It showed the Vigilante the roughest kind of low cot, sitting bolt upright in which was the old driver. Maverick Joe stopped at the sight. Jack’s eyes were bloody fierce and wolfish; they rolled restlessly in their cavernous sockets, and told the Vigilante that the old man was at that moment wrestling with death. “I’ll strike it yet. Afore Old Jack pushes in his last chips, he’ll get his hands on two things--Tom’s throat and the big bonanza. Jack Drivewell, the stage-driver, ar’ dead! but outen his ashes, phenix-like, he’s risen Old Jack the throat-hunter, and bonanza king.” “You don’t want me along!--thet’s it! The bonanza is to be divided, eh?” the wild man had stopped and turned upon Joe; but the next moment he leaped forward, and the two men clutching, staggered through an avenue beside the stall and rolled among the horses’ feet. It was a struggle for life in the dark, for the partition of heavy boards that rose between them and Jack’s sleeping-room shut off all light from the lantern. For several moments the two men writhed and struggled there, then the door opened and Maverick Joe came out. “I had to do it!” he groaned. “May Heaven have mercy on his soul and mine! but nobody heard the rumpus. Never mind, Jack; I’ll find the throat you wanted, and, with that big bonanza, if it was not a merely a creation of a crazy head, I’ll build you a monument that’ll make yer speerit proud.” The Vigilantes’ captain did not tarry.