purpose. But while the watchful Jesse was away, Bracken proceeded
to get busy in the good old Howe and Hummel fashion. Lots of
people that Herlihy had never seen before turned up and protested
that he was the finest fellow they had ever met. And as Herlihy
was, in fact, a good fellow, he made them welcome and dined and
wined at their expense until he woke up in the Menger Hotel in San
Antonio and inquired where he was.

Jesse meantime had returned from Austin to discover that Dodge with
his companions, Kaffenburgh and Bracken, had slipped out of Houston
early in the morning of February 11th, after disposing of Herlihy
and eluding the watchfulness of Herlihy's assistants. Hummel was
leading and by ten o'clock the next morning Dodge and his comrades
were on board an English merchantman lying in the harbor of
Galveston. Later in the same day the Hummel interests chartered
from the Southern Pacific Railroad for the sum of three thousand
dollars the sea-going tug Hughes, to which Dodge was now
transferred for the purpose of being conveyed to the port of
Tampico in the Republic of Mexico.

But here Hummel's wires became crossed with Jerome's, and
unfortunately for the little lawyer, the persons from whom the tug
had been leased turned out to be closely allied with the
prosecution's interests, with the result that the captain of the
tug was instructed by his superiors under no consideration to put
into any Mexican port, but on the contrary, to delay his departure
from the harbor of Galveston for a period of two days and then to
proceed only as far as Brownsville, Texas, where he should compel
the debarkation of the fugitive. The captain, who was a good sport
as well as a good officer, promptly threw himself into the part and