On the floor at his foot lay the extra. In falling it had presented to his view the other side of the fold. The ruled, double-column box, with the surrounding type lifted irregularly around it, attracted his attention. He picked it up, sat again on the edge of the bed, and read his own name printed there as the winner of Number One.
He couldn't make it out. He turned the paper, looking again at the date. "Owing to a mistake in transmitting the news," he read. He got up and walked the length of his compartment, the paper in his hand. How was that? Number One--he was the winner of Number One! How was that? How _was_ that?
There was fortune's caper for you! Number One! And the time past--or but a few hours between then and the limit--for stepping up and claiming it! And Hun Shanklin had a hand in it. Wait a minute--wait!
Hun Shanklin, and a man called Jerry, and Peterson, the Swede. But Shanklin, who sent telegrams assuring somebody that Peterson was Number One--Shanklin most of all. Slavens passed his hand with tentative pressure over the soiled bandage which bound his brow, feeling with finger and thumb along the dark stain which traced what it hid from sight. Shanklin! That would explain some things, many things. Perhaps all things.
He stood there, counting on his fingers like a schoolboy, frowning as he counted. One--two--three. The third day--that was the third day. And he was Number One. And he had lost!
Out in the office of the lodging-place a lamp burned smokily at the elbow of an old man who read a paper by its light.
"This should be the twenty-eighth, according to my reckoning," said Slavens, appearing before him and speaking without prelude.
The old man looked up, unfriendly, severe.
He bumped his bony shoulders over his paper again.
Undaunted, Slavens asked him the hour. The old clerk drew out a cheap watch and held it close to his grizzled face.
"Time for all honest men but me and you to be in bed, I reckon. It's a quarter to one."
A quarter to one! Next morning--no; that very morning at nine o'clock, Peterson would step up to the window of the land-office in Meander and file on Claim Number One--_his_ claim--Dr. Warren Slavens' claim, the seed of his dead hope. That is, if the long chance that lay between him and that hour should be allowed to pass unimproved.