He was waiting for me when Wyoming Ed and I entered together. The old
man was quite evidently in a state of nervous tension. He had been
walking up and down the room with hands clenched behind his back, and
now stood at the end farthest from the door as he heard us approach,
with his hands still clasped behind his back, and an expression of
deep anxiety upon his rugged face. All the electric lamps were turned
on, and the room was bright as day.
'Have you not brought him with you?' he cried.
'Brought him with me?' I echoed. 'Here is Wyoming Ed!'
The old man glared at him for a moment or two stupefied, then
moaned:--
'Oh, my God, my God, that is not the man!'
I turned to my short-haired fellow traveller.
'You told me you were Wyoming Ed!'
He laughed uneasily.
'Well, in a manner of speaking, so I have been for the last five
years, but I wasn't Wyoming Ed before that. Say, old man, are you
acting for Colonel Jim Baxter?'
Sanderson, on whom a dozen years seemed to have fallen since we
entered the room, appeared unable to speak, and merely shook his head
in a hopeless sort of way.
'I say, boys,' ejaculated the ex-convict, with an uneasy laugh,
half-comic, half-bewildered, 'this is a sort of mix-up, isn't it? I
wish Colonel Jim was here to explain.
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