It was brief, but the weight
of its words was mighty.
"The space you're using in Borealis is wanted for decenter purposes,"
it read. "We give you twenty-four hours to clear out. Git!--and then
God have mercy on your souls if any one of the gang is found in
Borealis!"
This was all there was, except for a fearful drawing of a coffin and a
skull. And such an array of inky names, scrawled with obvious pains
and distinctness, was on the paper that argument itself was plainly
hand in hand with a noose of rope.
Opposition to an army of forty wrathful and determined men would have
been but suicide. Parky nodded when he read the note. He knew the
game was closed. He sold all his interests in the camp for what they
would bring and bought a pair of horses and a carriage.
In groups and pairs his henchmen--suddenly thrown over by their leader
to hustle for themselves--sneaked away from the town, many of them
leaving immediately in their dread of the grim reign of law now come
upon the camp. Parky, for his part, waited in some deliberation, and
then drove away with a sneer upon his lips when at last his time was
growing uncomfortably short.
Decency had won--the moral slate of the camp was clean!
CHAPTER XXIII
A DAY OF JOY
There came a day--never to be forgotten in the annals of
Borealis--when, to the ringing of the bar of steel, Parson Stowe, with
his pretty little wife and the three little red-capped youngsters, rode
once more into town to make their home with their big, rough friends.
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