Avaricious farmers hunted him
with shot-guns. His blood might pay off a mortgage or send a son to
college. Public-spirited citizens took down their rifles and went out
after him. A pack of bloodhounds followed the way of his bleeding feet.
And the sleuth-hounds of the law, the paid fighting animals of society,
with telephone, and telegraph, and special train, clung to his trail
night and day.
Sometimes they came upon him, and men faced him like heroes, or stampeded
through barbed-wire fences to the delight of the commonwealth reading the
account at the breakfast table. It was after such encounters that the
dead and wounded were carted back to the towns, and their places filled
by men eager for the man-hunt.
And then Jim Hall disappeared. The bloodhounds vainly quested on the
lost trail. Inoffensive ranchers in remote valleys were held up by armed
men and compelled to identify themselves. While the remains of Jim Hall
were discovered on a dozen mountain-sides by greedy claimants for blood-
money.
In the meantime the newspapers were read at Sierra Vista, not so much
with interest as with anxiety. The women were afraid. Judge Scott pooh-
poohed and laughed, but not with reason, for it was in his last days on
the bench that Jim Hall had stood before him and received sentence.
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