Page:Cy Warman--The express messenger and other tales of the rail.djvu/23

Rh nuisance—for he hated a drunkard—the dark man bade the barkeeper good-night and passed out by the back door. The three men at the pine table followed him.

All this occurred in the last half of the closing hour of the week. Thirty minutes later, when the four mountaineers rode away from the Black Bear Correl, it was Sunday, but the people of Ruby Camp took no note of time. When the sun came up on that beautiful Sunday morning, it found the dark man and his companions at the top of the range overlooking Wet Mountain Valley. Before they had reached the foothills, the sun caught the two threads of steel that stretched away across the park and disappeared at the entrance of the canon at the foot of the vale. All night they had ridden single file, but now, as they entered the broad valley, they bunched their horses and conversed as they went along.

The dark man kept his eyes upon a barren peak that stood at the foot of the valley, where the railroad track, gliding smoothly over the mesa, seemed to tumble into the cañon as swift Niagara tumbles over the falls. At that