I have refrained from disclosing the name of the Seattle hotel for the reason that there is no desire on my part to compromise those from whom I afterward received a copy of the Porter letter.
Returning to Chicago, I wrote to friends in Seattle, requesting them to be on the lookout for a letter which would reach a certain hotel addressed to Mrs. Emma Porter, and upon its arrival, to secure it and send it to my Chicago address. In reply I was advised that the letter had come to hand, but could not be obtained. I thereupon wired instructions to get the letter at whatever cost, and was later notified that it had been forwarded in accordance with directions.
In due time I received a copy of the Porter letter, accompanied with the explanation that the original could not be secured for any length of time without detection, and hoping that the copy would suffice. It did, as it proved to my entire satisfaction that its contents were in the nature of a decoy for the purpose of locating Mrs. Watson, corroborating what McKinley and myself had suspected all along.
As to my friend Gallagher, alias Graham, the detective, he turned up missing when I arrived in Chicago from Milwaukee the second time, hence the presumption is that he followed the Porter letter on its mission to Seattle. Had it not been for the fact that I met him personally in Chicago at a later date, I should imagine that he was still engaged in keeping a watchful eye on the important missive through the medium of which he expected to make a really sensational capture.
Have you ever scented the sage-brush
That mantles Nevada's plain?
If not you have lived but half your life,
And that half lived in vain.
No matter where the place or clime
That your wandering footsteps stray
You will sigh if you know of her velvet fields
And their fragrance of leveled hay.
You will loiter a while in other lands,
When something seems to call,
And the lure of the sage-brush brings you back.
And holds you within its thrall.
You may tread in the halls of pleasure
Where the lamps of folly shine,
'Mid the sobbing of sensuous music
And the flow of forbidden wine.
But when the revel is over.
And the dancers turn to go,
You will long for a draft of the crystal streams
That springs from her peaks of snow.
You will ask for a sight of beetling crags,
Where the storm king holds his sway,
Where the sinking sun with its brush of gold
Tells the tale of the dying day.
And when you die you will want a grave.
Where the Washoe zephyr blows.
With the green of the sage-brush above your head.
What need to plant the rose?
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