“It’s dead right,” the clerk said, in answer to Horrocks’s sharply-put inquiry.  “I’d been in bed sometime when I was awakened by a terrible racket going on in the office.  It’s just under the room I sleep in.  Well, I hopped out of bed and slipped on some clothes, and went downstairs, thinking the governor had been taken with a fit or something.  When I got down the office was in darkness, and quiet as death.  I went cautiously to work, for I was a bit scared.  Striking a light I made my way in, expecting to find the governor laid out, but, instead, I found the furniture all chucked about and the room empty.  It wasn’t two shakes before I lit upon this sheet of paper.  It was lying on the desk.  The governor’s writing is unmistakable.  You can see for yourself; here it is—­”

Horrocks took the sheet, and, by the light of a match read the scrawl upon it.  The writing had evidently been done in haste, but its meaning was clear.

“Retief is here,” it ran.  “I am a prisoner.  Follow up with all speed.  LABLACHE.”

After reading, Horrocks turned to the clerk, who immediately went on with his story.

“Well, I just bolted out to the stables intending to take a horse and go over to ‘Poker’ John’s.  But when I got there I found the doors open, an’ every blessed horse gone.  Yes, your horses as well—­and the governor’s buckboard too.  I jest had a look round, saw that the team harness had gone with the rest, then I ran as hard as I could pelt to the Foss River Ranch.  I found old John up, but he’d been drinking, so, after a bit of talk, I learned from him where you were and came right along.  That’s all, sergeant, and bad enough it is too.  I’m afraid they’ll string the governor up.  He ain’t too popular, you know.”

The clerk finished up his breathless narrative in a way that left no doubt in the mind of his hearers as to his sincerity.  He was trembling with nervous excitement still.  And even in the starlight the look upon his face spoke of real concern for his master.

For some seconds the officer did not reply.  He was thinking rapidly.  To say that he was chagrined would hardly convey his feelings.  He had been done—­outwitted—­and he knew it.  Done—­like the veriest tenderfoot.  He, an officer of wide experience and of considerable reputation.  And worst of all he remembered Lablache’s warning.  He, the money-lender, had been more far-seeing—­had understood something of the trap which he, Horrocks, had plunged headlong into.  The thought was as worm-wood to the prairie man, and helped to cloud his judgment as he now sought for the best course to adopt.  He saw now with bitter, mental self-reviling, how the story that Gautier had told him—­and for which he had paid—­and which had been corroborated by the conversation he had heard in the camp, had been carefully prepared by the wily Retief; and how he, like a hungry, simple fish, had deliberately risen and devoured the bait.  He was maddened by the thought, too, that the money-lender had been right and he wrong, and took but slight solace from the fact that the chief disaster had overtaken that great man.