CHAPTER XI

ALGY STIRS UP TROUBLE

Bostwick arrived in Goldite at three in the afternoon, dressed in
prison clothes. He came on a freight wagon, the deliberate locomotion
of which had provided ample time for his wrath to accumulate and
simmer. His car was forty miles away, empty of gasolene, stripped of
all useful accessories, and abandoned where the convicts had compelled
him to drive them in their flight.

A blacker face than his appeared, with anger and a stubble of beard
upon it, could not have been readily discovered. His story had easily
outstripped him, and duly amused the camp, so that now, as he rode
along the busy street, in a stream of lesser vehicles, autos, and dusty
horsemen, arriving by two confluent roads, he was angered more and more
by the grins and ribald pleasantries bestowed by the throngs in the
road.

To complicate matters already sufficiently aggravating, Gettysburg,
Napoleon C. Blink, and Algy, the Chinese cook, from the Monte Cristo
mine, now swung into line from the northwest road, riding on horses and
burros. They were leading three small pack animals, loaded with all
their earthly plunder.

The freight team halted and a crowd began to congregate. Bostwick was
descending just as the pack-train was passing through the narrow way