Here, where the light was better, he threw up his foot on a chair and deftly affixed one of the spurs. Putting up the other foot, he began adjusting the second spur.
He remembered putting the end of the strap through the buckle and beginning to pull. Following that, memories of every kind grew hazy and mixed.
Something landed on his head, from behind. It was a terrific blow, and the trapper lurched forward, overturned the chair, and still further injured his head by bringing it into contact with the sharp edge of the window-casing.
Then it seemed to Nomad that he dropped, and then that he was floating around in the air. Little gleams danced before his eyes, resembling varicolored fire-balls, like those which are thrown by Roman candles. Then night engulfed the fire-balls, and a dead silence intervened--a silence of complete oblivion.
Nomad opened his eyes in the dark. The first thing he heard was the court-house bell.
One, two, three---- He counted the strokes. There were nine of them. Nine o’clock! Suffering catamounts! What had happened to him since seven?
Then, as his mind once more became active, he began to piece together his experiences. While he was putting on that second spur, some one must have crowded in on him through the open door and struck him from behind.
Foul play, of course! But by whom? Who could have done it if not some one of the Bernritter and Jacobs outfit?
Then Nomad recalled what Bascomb had said to Jacobs regarding the “hotel end” of their plotting. Was he, Nomad, the object of the hotel plot?
Nomad knew that he could not have been the direct object, for Jacobs and Bascomb, during their talk in the El Rio, had not known that he was on Jacobs’ trail.
And yet, somehow, the trapper was sure that he had dropped into Bascomb’s work in the hotel. Bascomb’s light-fingered men may not have meant to get Nomad at the start-off, but they had got him, nevertheless.
The trapper’s hands and feet were bound with towels, and there was a towel tied over his mouth.
Where was he? He moved his feet around, and in this way discovered that he was in cramped quarters.
The air was suffocating. Undoubtedly the miscreants who had treated him to this surprise had dragged him into the closet.