I’LL confess that it took me a little while to screw up my resolution to the point where I could tell myself that I was entirely ready and willing to meet Ike Dawlin in the circle of his associates.
We had left behind us brown fields where wheat grew, and had passed through the Idaho prune-orchards—a brakeman told me they were prune-orchards. We had come into the hill country and the railroad wriggled its way along the foot of the canon.
I took it for granted that Mr. Dragg proposed to stay with me. Every little while he came and set his nose against the glass of the car’s forward door and glared at me. When we stopped at a station I stuck my head out of the window and made sure that he did not leave the train. The two of us were playing a sort of “even Stephen” game—silent peek-a-boo. I kept carefully away from Judge Kingsley, for I did not care to have Dragg report that I was in the company of an elderly man with a roll of chin-whiskers; Mr. Dawlin might recognize the description and take alarm.
The judge sat close to the window, wrapped in his cloak, and scowled up at the canon’s walls closing in behind as the railroad wound along. He looked as if he felt like a man headed for the innermost chambers of tophet, with the doors slamming behind him. As the hills shut in to the north, my feelings were of that sort, anyway!
And so night came!
I had been asking a lot of questions of that obliging brakeman. My folder named a terminus of the road and I had paid to that point, but I learned that the railroad had been stretched along six or eight miles farther down the canon so as to serve a mushroom town which was the depot for a freshly discovered mining section.
When the train stopped at the old terminus, both Mr. Dragg and I found ourselves very curious in regard to each other; had it not been for the glass in the car door we would have bumped noses when we hurried to make mutual inspection. But he stayed on the train—and so did I.
It was a young, a very young railroad, that last bit. The train crawled like a caterpillar—and that’s a good description, for the cars went bumping up slowly over the bulges in the track. Every now and then we got a side-slat which made me think we were going into the creek.
I was too busy worrying about that train to give much thought to what was going to happen to me when I landed in “Royal City” along with Mr. Dragg. Such, I was informed, was the name of the new town. They certainly do pick good names to build up to in the West, just as Seth Dorsey, of Carmel, built a house on to the brass doorknob he found in the road.
Judge Kingsley was not affording me much encouragement; he sat and hung on to the arm of his seat and glared unutterable reproach at me.
I was considerably glad to get off that train.
But as to Royal City! The place tickled me about as much as if it were a cemetery and I were riding in the hearse. It wasn’t even as ripe as that railroad.
My first performance was to step into a mud-hole about half-way to my knees, and I wondered how my pearl-gray trousers stood up under that introduction to the town.
I couldn’t see Mr. Dragg or anybody else; there in that bowl among the hills the darkness was something a man could eat! We stumbled over upheavals of muddy earth, stepped into more holes, and made our way across the especially treacherous places along single planks which were half submerged in mire. A few lanterns, tied to short posts, were dim beacons to direct new arrivals from the railroad to the heart of the “city.” Quite a glare of lights marked the center of business activity. The slope of the hillside was dotted with bits of radiance from uncurtained windows. In that darkness only those points of light hinted at the extent of this new town. The dots were widely scattered, showing that Royal City was ambitiously endeavoring to cover as much ground as possible.
After threading the course marked by the lanterns we came to a stretch of pulpy mud which was bordered by a sidewalk of four planks abreast, evidently the main street of the place. There were buildings of considerable size on both sides of the thoroughfare, but these buildings certainly did put Royal City into the mushroom class. There was not a bit of stone or brick nor a clapboard or shingle in evidence. The buildings were constructed of beams, boards, laths, and tarred paper. They gave me the feeling that I could pop them between my hands like I’d pop a blown-up paper bag.
A lantern, hung on the corner of a building containing a store, lighted up a sign, “Empire Avenue.” The sign over the door of the store advertised the place as the “Imperial Emporium.” A fairly huge structure with tarred-paper outer walls was indicated by its sign as being the “Imperial Hotel.”
There was nothing bashful about the names picked in Royal City!
The windows of the “Imperial Hotel” shed plenty of light upon the sidewalk in front of it, and I caught sight of Dragg hurrying past as if he wished to be swallowed up in the shadow’s on the other side. The man had reached the street ahead of us, for he had been in the smoking-car at the front of the train.
I took a chance and led Kingsley into the “Imperial Hotel” and registered in a book that a man in shirtsleeves tossed at me. I wrote “Adam Mann” and “A. Fellow”—the “A” standing for “Another,” of course, and that wasn’t bad for a quick grab at names. I did not care to advertise the name of Zebulon Kingsley to certain gentlemen in those parts.
From the corner of my eye I saw Dragg peering in at the window when the man in shirt-sleeves led us upstairs to a room which held two narrow cots and an unpainted washstand with bowl and pitcher. The walls were of tarred paper.
“Is this all you can give us for a room?” asked the judge, as sour as vinegar.
“What do you expect in a new town—marble floors and gold door-knobs? I have taken care of better men than you and they haven’t kicked.” He turned on me; I had not said anything. “You seem to have a rush of plug-hat to the brain!”
His impudence gave me my chance. Dragg had located me at that hotel and I wondered if I couldn’t turn a little trick.
“We’ll move on and look for a landlord with better manners,” I said.
“Go ahead,” advised the man. “A lot of tenderfeet do the same thing and after they’ve taken a look at the other place they come back here and beg for a room.”
On the street I kept in the shadows. After a time we came to another hulk of paper and boards. Its sign read, “Pallace Hotel.”
That extravagance in L’s might hint at generosity, I pondered, but I had my doubts.
The “Palace” had a bar-room in the front of the house and there were many customers crowded at it.
“We’d better go back to the other hotel, bad as it is,” suggested the judge. “There are drunken men in there and it is a wicked place.”
I put up my hand and pushed Kingsley back from the window into the gloom.
“When one has business with wicked men those men must be followed to a wicked place, sir. I found fault with the other hotel on purpose. I didn’t intend to stay there after I knew that a certain man thought he had located me for the night. It’s a wise plan to keep wicked men guessing. Stay back here a moment!”
I stepped along and stared in at the window, hiding my face with my forearm.
I saw Dragg at the bar, and Dragg had a man by the arm and was whispering in his ear. Dragg’s face expressed huge pleasure. He slapped the man on the back and bought drinks. After they had tossed off the liquor, Dragg resumed his business at the man’s ear.
This man stood out in that slouchy group at the bar as a peacock would stand out among pullets in a hen-yard. He was distinctly a loud noise in the matter of wardrobe. He would have made a lurid smear even among the high dressers who top the crests of the Broadway crowds between Forty-second Street and Greeley’s statue. He was of that sort of men who are paunchy and seem to be glad of it, because the extra beam affords them opportunity to display variegated waistcoats to better advantage. I realized that I was looking on “Peacock” Pratt.
After a few moments I tiptoed back to Kingsley, and, without speaking, propelled him to a spot where he could get a view of the men at the bar.
“Do you recognize anybody there, sir?”
“There he is—the man who brought the brick—one of the infernal robbers!” stuttered Kingsley. He was fairly beside himself with sudden excitement. His eyes had fallen first on the most conspicuous figure in the room. “He has my money. I want it. I’ll—”
But I pushed him back when he started to rush into the hotel. “I guess that man wouldn’t hand you his roll if you ran in there and snapped your fingers under his nose, Judge Kingsley. You recognize him, eh? That’s enough for now. I’ll tell you that your friend, there, is known in this section as ‘Peacock’ Pratt, and he’s a good man for us to stay away from for the present.”
“How do you know so much about these men—how do you know where to come to find them—dragging me across the continent?” demanded the old man. His fury at sight of that smug blackleg had to blow off and I was the nearest object.
“I’ll have to confess that I didn’t know for sure I was to see this man here to-night. I had my line out and a good bait on, but I didn’t believe I’d get a bite so soon. You must keep cool, Judge Kingsley—keep cool and out of sight. Simply seeing that man isn’t getting your money. We’ve got considerable of a job ahead of us.”
The judge was all of a tremble while we stood there at the edge of the shadow and watched the room and the drinkers. At last, with a flourish of his hand, Pratt gave orders to the bartender to fill all glasses. We heard his hoarse voice above all others. He tossed a bill on the bar and he and Dragg left in company and climbed the stairs leading up from the hotel office.
“Judge Kingsley,” I said, “I left the other place and came over here hoping I could sneak close enough to a certain chap to overhear what he proposes to do about a little matter that I suggested to him a few hours ago. I see that he has found somebody to talk to. We’ve got a handy sort of house for eavesdropping, but I want you to remember that the other fellow can hear us, too. Come along with me and keep your head. A lot depends!” The “Pallace” was evidently more of a free and easy tavern than the “Imperial.” There was no register on the planks which served for an office desk. The proprietor looked up at us and leisurely lighted his pipe before answering my questions regarding accommodations.
“Four dollars apiece—two in a room. Pay now. Includes breakfast, and there’s a cold, stand-up supper out in the dining-room.”
“We bought box lunches from the brakeman on the train; we don’t want supper,” I explained.
“Price just the same. Supper is there, and I ain’t to blame if you don’t want to eat it,” stated the proprietor. “You needn’t look for any place to write your names,” he added, noting that my eyes seemed to be searching for something that should be on the desk. “We don’t keep books. And half the men who come along here can’t write, anyway.”
I laid the money in his grimy hand and he fished two cards from his vest pocket and scrawled “Brakfust” on each with a lead-pencil.
“Give ’em up to the table-girl in the morning. Now, gents, all the rooms up-stairs are just alike and there ain’t no locks on the doors. Go up and help yourselves to any room that ain’t being used. I hope you don’t snore, either of you. It’s apt to start gun-play from them that’s trying to get to sleep in other rooms, and the walls we’ve got up-stairs don’t stop bullets. Sleep hearty!”
The judge followed me, muttering his opinions in regard to the hotel methods in Royal City.
“Hush!” I warned. “Tread lightly and keep still. It’s a stroke of luck that he lets us pick our own rooms.”
Smoky, stinking kerosene-lamps lighted dimly the corridor up-stairs. Unplaned planks formed the floor, and here again were the walls of tarred paper that had enabled Royal City to grow overnight. Some of the doors that gave upon the corridor were open, and the rooms were dark and apparently untenanted. Light shone from chinks in the walls here and there, in other places, showing that guests were in their rooms.
I tiptoed cautiously along the planks with ear out at each point where light sifted from crannies. Then I grasped the judge by the arm and thrust him into a room. I lighted the tiny lamp and motioned the old man to take a seat in the single chair. I sat on the edge of the bed.
When a drunken man is on a topic that sops up all his interest, he not only iterates, he reiterates. It is hard to pry a wabbly tongue loose from the favorite topic. Intoxication seems to make the subject fresher and more entrancing with each repetition. The fuddled mind gets into a run-around, as men lost in snow or fog keep on traveling and always return to the same place. I had no means of determining how many times Dragg had been over the subject with Mr. Pratt, but that latter gentleman kept snarling out protests that the narrator did not heed. It was a story about how a stranger in a plug-hat—a shark of a lawyer—had hypnotized him, Dragg, on the train and had sucked out of him all his plans, projects, and secrets in regard to the new city of Breed and now proposed to rob said Dragg of all profits and rake-offs, and if a man could do that and get away with it what would be the use in any honest man starting out in the world and turning a trick for himself, as Dragg had proposed to do? So on and on, he gabbled.
“Say, look here, ‘Dangerflag’”—and this seemed a good nickname for Dragg’s red face—“don’t con me any more as the human charlotte russe—the top part of me is hard! There ain’t any such thing as hypnotizing a man when he doesn’t want to be hypnotized. You were drunk and you slit open your little bundle of playthings for him to look at.”
“If I wasn’t hypnotized how did he get two guns off me—and I sitting there not able to move hand or foot or wink my eyes?”
“I’d be more inclined to think you begged him to take ’em as a guarantee of friendship, and offered to kiss him in the bargain,” sneered Mr. Pratt. “I’ve seen you drunk, Dragg.”
“But I wasn’t to the give-my-shirt drunk stage that time,” insisted the other. “I was hiring him for a lawyer—driving a sharp trade with him—and then he hypnotized me and cleaned me out. And he’s over there in the other hotel—and I’m going to get to him before he puts me out of business. I’ll tell you again—”
“For the love of Jehoshaphatdon’ttell me again!” protested Pratt. “I have got it by heart.”
“But you haven’t told me where Ike Dawlin is. He is the only man that shark is afraid of. He told me so. He reckons that Ike is in the East. That makes him bold to do me dirt. I made believe that I know where Ike is. I tried to scare him, but the bluff didn’t go. He is sure that Ike ain’t West. You’re Ike’s regular partner, and you know where he is. I need him. Send for him, and we’ll hold that plug-hatted skyootus here till Ike can whirl in and back him off. Blast him! I could have dropped him if this was ten years ago, even if he was from the East, and wore a plug-hat—and I could have got away with it—but the law sharks have been and tied us all up.”
“You want to think twice before you try gun-play on a man from the East who comes wearing a plug-hat,” advised Pratt. “It’s a pretty good sign that he is from the upper shelves back home, and somebody will be slammed hard if he gets hurt. Keep your hands off a plug-hatter, ‘Dangerflag.’ I don’t believe Ike would dip in, even if he were here. He’s too comfortable just now to play scarecrow for your private interests. He might, if I asked him to, of course. But I don’t see any reason for asking him.”
“I’ll give you a half share in the Breed job,” promised Dragg. “I’ve told you I would if you can gaff that law shark.”
“The Breed job looks like digging into a national bank vault with your thumb-nail,” remarked Mr. Pratt, listlessly. “A lot of law and complications! This re-locating business runs against snags always. I don’t mind telling you that Ike and I find the old game a lot easier when we want to clean up an easy make. I’ll be blamed if we could sell mining stock the last time we went East. What do you know about that? And then we nudged each other and turned around and speared three easy propositions on the good old gold-brick game. You wouldn’t believe they’d still fall—but they do it. It’s simply a case of go hunt in the odd corners for the right man. They’re there, waiting. We peeled five thousand off the back of an old town treasurer—as soft money as we ever pulled. A town treasurer, mind you! We didn’t have to go farther into the bush than that! You can’t expect us to be very enthusiastic about a claim-jumping proposition just now—with plenty in our Dockets. Gimme a match! When you go to fighting a boom city and a railroad crowd, you’ve got your work cut out for you—and just now I’m feeling a lot like loafing.”
Mr. Pratt was very wordy—but he was almighty interesting. Who was hugging the most money—he or Dawlin?
It was plain to me that the town treasurer of Levant was holding in with difficulty. He twisted on his chair and his face was gray with anger and his lips moved. I scowled a warning.
“Well, you can loaf onmyjob all right if you’ll grab in,” snapped Dragg, temper in his voice. “I’m not asking you to break your neck. You have got the thing sized up all wrong. I don’t expect to own Breed. I’m going to operate on bluff. The Breed boomers and the railroad will come across rather than have the city set back by a hold-up of everything while land titles are being settled. If they’ll hand me cash, I’ll keep still, surrender my claim, and the new lines can be ran and locations filed before anybody wakes up. They’ll see the point all right.”
“And I reckon that the lawyer you hired on the train sees it all right, too,” commented Pratt.
“I don’t know what made me blow myself to him after I had dodged lawyers so long,” mourned Dragg. “But the way he was dressed made him look so mighty solid and reliable and honest—and his eyes were nice and brown! He got me! I tell you I was hypnotized. It wasn’t just because I had budge in me. But he’ll never get to Breed ahead ofme. That’ll be his game, of course.”
“Better make your getaway to-night and beat him to it,” suggested Pratt.
Dragg was profane in his rejection of this counsel. He stated that Pratt ought to have more sense than to think a project of that order could be settled by a sprinting-match.
“You know what Callas prairie is in March as well as I do,” he sputtered. “It would be a gamble which one of us would get across first if it comes to a race through that ‘’dobe’ mud. It’s all luck whether a stage-coach or a wagon or a cayuse gets through. I’d have gone around and come into Breed from the south, but I thought I’d rather tackle sixteen miles of Callas mud in March than ride six hundred miles in jerk-water trains. See here, Pratt, I’ve got to have time to operate this thing without that shark hanging to me. He’s afraid of Ike. I don’t know what made him tell me so—but he was so mighty sure that Ike was East that he wanted to shoot his mouth off a little so as to aggravate me, I reckon. He has got to be held here in Royal City till I can pull off my job in Breed. I’m not going to have him racing me around over the country, with a chance of his queering the whole proposition. Now come into this thing and help me out, will you?”
Mr. Pratt yawned audibly and allowed that he would not.
“Then get word to Ike Dawlin for me,” pleaded Dragg.
“I don’t think he wants to be bothered,” drawled Pratt, indifferently. “I won’t send for him. That’s final!”
I think it would have been hard telling at that moment who was more disappointed, Mr. Dragg or myself!
I had reckoned specially on Mr. Dawlin. He was boss of the gang, according to his brother’s telling. In all Likelihood he was better thatched with greenbacks than anybody else in the band.
“Furthermore,” stated Mr. Pratt, “I can’t be bothered with your business. I have some of my own to attend to. I’m going to jump the train to-morrow and get back to some place where it’s safe to wear real clothes instead of a diving-suit or overalls.”
And so I was going to lose Mr. Pratt!
To be sure, I had not exactly made up my mind what to do with him if he remained in Royal City; but if he were to start on some kind of a hike and we were obliged to chase him we would betray ourselves and our case, sure as fate. Mr. Pratt was certainly no fool, and would know how to cover a trail the moment he suspected that somebody was chasing him. But I could see no reasonable way of keeping an independent gentleman of his nature in that dump of a Royal City.
“I tell you, you are turning down a good lay when you duck out on this Breed—”
“Oh, hell!” snapped Pratt with all kinds of coarse scorn in his tone. “About all this re-locating business amounts to is that you’ll either be bored in the back or boarded in jail! I’ve been studying the game, Dragg.” He grew confidential. “That’s why I ran down here to this hog-wallow. Ike and I came. These lines here are run by guess and by gad! There’s no clear title back of the land. We figured we would jump in.”
“You’d have the law behind you,” insisted Dragg. “Sure! And all the citizens who own guns, too! The trouble is, Dragg, they all know they’re skating on thin ice. They are looking for something to drop. And so as to be ready for trouble when it comes they have gone to work and got just as mad as they can stick so that they can put a claim-jumper where he belongs in a hurry. None of it for me, Dragg.”
The other muttered.
“I tell you, Dragg,” insisted Mr. Pratt, “I’d hate to be the man to put my name on to a re-location stake in this place! Law to back you—yes! But I have been testing out their temper! It’s dangerous.”
“But mobs don’t do up men any longer in this part of the country.”
“Perhaps I stated it a little strong, Dragg. But a fellow who tries to put anything over on this town, with the people here in their present temper, will get slammed into the pen—and there’s no knowing when they’ll let him out!”
And if that wasn’t a straight tip from Mr. Pratt to a poor young chap in desperate need of good counsel and help in a ticklish matter, then I’m no guesser.
“So it’s back up the line for me—where I can buy a cocktail and get the smell of this tarred paper out of my clothes!”
But Mr. Pratt’s tip was such a helpful one that, providing Judge Kingsley had had a drop of sporting blood in him, I would have posted a little bet that Mr. Pratt would stay on with us for a while. I could see that the judge had made up his mind already that we had lost our Mr. Pratt.
“Sit here and don’t make a sound!” I whispered, and I pussy-footed for the door.
He opened his mouth and I shook my fist at him. I hoped I had on a demoniac expression—I tried to put one on.
“Go to the devil, you and Dawlin, too!” barked Dragg. “If I’ve got to handle this thing single-handed, the make will be all the bigger for me. I’m all done worrying about an Eastern shyster beating me out of the game on my own stamping-ground. If he tries to take the stage in the morning to cross Callas prairie, I’ll smash that plug-hat down over his eyes, yank them guns out from under his coat-tail and blow him into the middle of next week. I’ll think up a story that will let me out.”
Ah, so Mr. Dragg must be considered along with ‘Mr. Pratt and Mr. Dawlin!
I left the room and hurried down-stairs, hoping the stores had not closed. My mind was mighty busy! I found a store that was still open. It was the “Imperial Emporium” and seemed to be well named, for I was able to purchase there a pair of shears, some spirit gum, a carpenter’s lead-pencil, and a huge ball of twine. Then I hustled back to Zebulon Kingsley, who sat livid and rigid, listening to the bragging of the man who had robbed him.
I suppose the stuff I tossed on the bed looked mighty queer to him, and I wasn’t just sure about all of it myself. But I did not dare to ask any leading questions in Royal City about claim-jumping and I decided to tumble along alone, doing my little best as an amateur.
Zebulon Kingsley was in a sufficiently volcanic state of mind without any more stirring up.
It’s a wonder that I ever got away with what I started on next in my case.
Perhaps his settled idea that I had lost my mind assisted in taming him enough so that he submitted in his fear that I might become violent. I look back now and wonder how I ever presumed so greatly even in the emergency that had arisen. But if “Peacock” Pratt were to remain in Royal City and if Ike Dawlin would join him, as I anticipated, the man with me must not be known as Zebulon Kingsley, of Levant, their victim. So I stood in front of Judge Kingsley and issued an ultimatum.
I’ll never forget the look on his face!
THE judge sat there with his hat and coat on; the looks of that room did not invite anybody to take any comfort in it.
I leaned close to his ear and told him to stand up. Then I began to peel off his wrappings—overcoat, undercoat, and waistcoat. But when I unbuttoned his collar he pushed me away.
“I’ll explain it out to you just as soon as I get a chance, sir,” I whispered. “But we mustn’t make any noise here.” I gathered my courage. “I’m going to cut off your beard!” I had to clap my hand over his mouth to keep him quiet. “I can’t argue now! If Pratt lays eyes on you he’ll stampede. We mustn’t let any of that money get away.” I pushed him back upon the chair. “Keep down your hands,” I urged. “It’s got to be done. Your money is at stake—remember that! What’s a few whiskers compared with ten thousand dollars!” I was talking just as if I expected to swap hair for money.
I confess I did not have much of a plan worked out just at that moment—but certain notions were coming to me in sections, as one might say. And the principal notion just then was that I must not let a set of whiskers, even if they grew on Judge Kingsley, flag the whole proposition. That was the first thing to look after, now that we were close to the game—change his looks!
He realized as well as I that we couldn’t start any riot there on our side of that paper partition. I don’t believe any other consideration would have made him give in to me. If I had been getting his neck ready for the ax his looks would not have been more wild. I clipped his beard as carefully as I could with the shears and laid the tufts, as I removed them, in a little heap on the bed.
Mr. Pratt was thoroughly tired of hearing Mr. Dragg repeat himself; we knew that because Mr. Pratt said so with a lot of vigor and stated that he was going to bed in his own room.
Mr. Dragg advised him to be up early and see what happened to the “plug-hatter,” providing said “plug-hatter” tried to get away for Breed on the stage.
“I’ll do it,” promised Mr. Pratt. “I haven’t been having much fun down in this hog-wallow, and I need to have my feelings cheered up.”
Then he marched away down the corridor, making the whole building creak and shiver.
Mr. Dragg had considerable to say to himself, in the way of rehearsing his threats, while he was kicking off his shoes and getting ready for bed. Then his mutterings ended in a rasping snore—and he was off!
I was glad he was asleep because that gave me a chance to talk to the judge, keeping my voice down cautiously.
“I have some other plans, sir! I have had to think pretty quick! But the talk between those scamps has given me a rather good idea, I think.”
“You seem to be wasting your time on a lot of silly business,” muttered the judge. “This is boy’s play out of a detective dime novel, sir. We know where one of the robbers is. We can have him arrested. We can put the screws to him and find out where the other renegade is.”
“But that means going to law, Judge!”
“We must let the law handle it from now on.”
“We can’t afford to do that, sir.”
“But the law will—”
“The law will grab the crooks, maybe. But your money will be tied up along with ’em. We are strangers out here, Judge Kingsley. And you don’t want the notoriety of the thing. Remember, you bought a gold brick!” He winced, but it wasn’t on account of the shears! “Just getting those crooks into jail won’t help your case,” I insisted. “We haven’t much time to turn around in. The fifteenth of April isn’t very far away. I reckon it’s going to mean getting ten thousand dollars in ten days!” He cringed. “The law is too slow and careful for us just now! They pulled that money off by a trick. We must get it back by—— Well, I don’t know just yet how we’ll get it back—but it won’t be by any law business.”
“Do you intend to rob them and mix me into more trouble?”
“I’d rob ’em in a minute if I could do it and get away,” I told him, calmly. And then, because he was getting excited, I advised him to keep his jaw still so that the shears might not slip and cut him.
When the clipping was done I got my little kit out of my bag and got ready to shave him; there was a tin dish full of water in the corner of the room. Of course he was glad to have the stubble I had left under his chin scraped off, and submitted quietly. However, I knew my real tussle with Judge Zebulon Kingsley was just ahead of me.
On the wall there was a little mirror with glass so wavy that it made a human face seem like the physog of a baboon. I pulled it down and showed the judge his countenance with his whiskers off.
“You see it doesn’t change your looks very much, after all, Judge. Your beard was all under your chin instead of on your face.” I didn’t want to jump him too suddenly.
“If you have changed my looks as much as that glass represents, you’ve done a good job,” he said, dryly. It was the first time I had ever heard anything like humor from him, and I was cheered and made bolder—so bold that I came right out with it!
“I’ll have to change your appearance just a bit more, Judge. I know how to do it, for I did it once in my own case.”
I uncorked the bottle of gum. But when I started toward him he did not depend on his hands for defense—he put up his foot and pushed me away. I protested.
“There’s no use going half-way in this thing, sir. It only means a mustache for you out of your own beard.”
“I won’t be cockawhooped up in any such style!”
“Are you going to let those men recognize you as the town treasurer of Levant?”
He glared at me and kept his foot up.
“We’re after the money—we’re after the money!” I urged. “Just think what a little thing this is you’re balking on, sir!”
“But you give me no hint as to how you expect to get the money! I’m at the end of my patience. I won’t submit to any more foolishness.”
“This isn’t foolishness, Judge Kingsley! It’s a precaution we must take. I’ve got a plan to keep those men from jumping out on us in the morning—and they’ll be sure to see you.” I pushed down his foot and I picked up the hair on the bed and looked resolute. “It’s got to be done, sir. I’m going to do it!”
He gave in to me as he had in other cases when I became savage, but I realized that fury boiled in him.
I made a mighty good job of it, if I do say so, but he angrily refused to look at himself in the glass. I used all the hair in his beard and gave him a mustache that fairly cut in half that hatchet face of his; his best friend would not have known Judge Kingsley.
I advised him to go to bed and to be sure to sleep on his back so that the mustache would not be disturbed.
I sharpened the carpenter’s pencil and hid the ball of twine under my coat, the judge looking at me as savage as a bear.
“Now what?” he growled.
“Do you know anything about the right way of relocating a claim?” I asked. “Anything in law about it?”
“It’s more likely to be described in the thieves’ catechism,” he snarled. “I have never owned a copy!”.
That’s all the help I got fromhim!
Well, if I didn’t know much about the regular way, I reckoned I could make considerable trouble in town by blundering along with a little way of my own. So I tiptoed down-stairs.
Apparently Royal City had quit the job and gone to sleep. The hotel office was dark, and when I stepped forth into the night there was no glimmer of light anywhere. Even the lanterns that served as the city’s municipal lighting-plant in the streets had burned out or had been blown out. It was a case of grope, but I had looked about carefully when I went shopping and had a pretty good memory for locations.
There was a little pile of laths at the corner of the hotel. I had noticed them when I had lurked in the shadows with Judge Kingsley. I picked up a lath and wrote on its side, well up toward one end, “Relocated. Dragg.” Then I pushed the lath down into the mud at the corner of the hotel and tied to it the end of the ball of twine. With several laths under my arm I proceeded a few paces, unwinding the twine, and pushed another lath down and knotted my string about its end. Thus I circumnavigated the hotel, sticking down marked laths, knotting about them the twine. In this fashion I calculated I had declared on one Dragg a re-location of the hotel site—or rather made it seem that Dragg had tried on a clumsy trick to jump a land claim.
With footsteps muffled by the mud of Royal City, moving unseen in the night, I was truly a generous cuss. I located nothing for myself. I took the “Imperial Emporium” for Pratt, and re-located the site of the “Imperial Hotel” for Dawlin. Then I stole back into the tavern, taking off my muddy shoes at the door.
That slatted bed and the snores pealing everywhere kept me awake nearly all night, and next morning I was down before anybody else was stirring. In the gray dawn out slouched from an inner room the landlord, yawning, growling, blinking—beginning his day’s duties in a distinctly grouchy frame of mind.
“What time does the stage-coach leave for Breed City?” I asked.
“Nobody but a fool would take a stage for Breed this time of year—but a man who comes out here in March and mud-time, wearing a plug-hat, must be a fool. So you’ll leave at ha’f pas’ six,” was the landlord’s genial response.
“And what time is breakfast?”
“Time for you to get the stage. What do you want to ask such a cussed fool question as that for? What do you think I’m getting up to do at this hour in the morning?” Well, I wasn’t in any jolly mood myself. “I didn’t know but you might be up to sing a hymn to the morning star.”
“Say, you’re looking for trouble, ain’t you?” bawled the landlord. He came from behind the counter. “I’ll cave that plug—”
That made me good and mad! “No, I’m looking for cartridges to fit my guns,” I stated, pulling both weapons. “I’ve got only twelve left—six in each chamber.”
My friend checked himself so suddenly that he nearly tumbled on his nose.
“Does the store open early?”
“Yes, sir,” said the landlord, quite respectfully.
“Then I’ll take a stroll up that way. Make my bacon thick and be very careful not to fry the juice out of it.” There’s nothing like establishing a bit of a reputation in a strange town, especially if a fellow has planted seeds of trouble; I could see those laths through the window! I had begun to feel rather devilish. .
“Yes, sir,” said the landlord. “We aim to please.”
I glanced at my work of the evening before as I sauntered along the plank walk. The new laths and the white twine showed up well against the black adobe mud.
Sounds of housekeeping, clatter of dishes and of stove-covers indicated that the proprietor of the “Emporium” dwelt over the store. I rattled the door, and at last the man appeared and unlocked it from within. He was surly and slatted the box of cartridges across the counter.
“Is it because you don’t care for early customers that you have built a fence of laths and string about your place?” I inquired.
“There ain’t no such thing there.” But he hurried to the door. He gazed. He ran to the nearest lath and stooped down and read what was written thereon and cracked his fists together and kicked the lath and stamped it into the mud and swore loudly. “Pratt, hey? ‘Peacock’ Pratt trying one of his gambling bluffs because titles ain’t been settled here yet, is he? If a kettle-bellied catfish like Pratt thinks he can jump a city lot on me he’s got trouble coming his way on the down grade with the axle greased.”
There was much more that the infuriated merchant had to say regarding the general standing of Pratt, but I did not linger. I strolled into the “Imperial Hotel.”
“I knew you’d come back—they all do; but you can’t do business with me,” the landlord informed me before I had opened my mouth. “Once you turn your nose up at my house, then up it stays, as far as I am concerned! Mosey back to your pig-pen!”
“Very well! But I’ll drop back here when the new proprietor takes hold.”
“What new proprietor?”
“I suppose it’s a man named Dawlin. I note that his name appears as the man who has re-located this property.” The landlord took a jump and a look and saw the laths and string. He ran out of doors. He was an able-bodied man with a large voice, and he outdid his merchant neighbor in volume of cursing. It was plain that he was well acquainted with the mental and moral qualities of Ike Dawlin.
So I went back to my own tavern. Judge Kingsley was waiting in the office, and the landlord was talking to the old man with considerable affability.
“I was telling your friend here that we aim to please! I reckon the girl can fit you out with breakfast now if you’re minded to step into the dining-room.”
“Thank you—we’ll step in, sir. By the way, there seems to be considerable excitement on the street, Mr. Landlord. Men named Dawlin and Pratt, whoever they may be, have re-located business sites occupied by the big store and the other hotel. I just noticed that the same thing has been done to you; you’d better take a look outside.”
By the manner in which the owner of the “Pallace” pounded his way to the street it might have been guessed that the consciences of the pioneers of Royal City were not wholly clear as to their several rights of property. But the manner in which they were taking the re-locations showed that they were entirely ready to fight for what they had squatted on.
“By the bald-headed juductionary of Walla Walla County,” howled the “Pallace” landlord, “that tinhorn Dragg has sneaked out of my house in the night so as to do me up, has he?”
“Do you say it’s Dragg?” bawled the landlord of the “Imperial” from a distance. “It’s Dawlin, up here! He’s been boozing here in my house under cover for a week, but he wasn’t so drunk, so it seems, but he could dodge out last night and try to steal my property away from me.”
Say, I swapped one very large look with Zebulon Kingsley, who stood in the hotel door, staring from furious landlord to furious landlord. The old man had heard enough the night before to appreciate the value of that information in regard to Dawlin.
“It’s that skunk of a dressed-up Pratt in my case,” shouted the owner of the “Emporium” from farther up the street.
“I reckon I can show any man who tries to steal my property that I’m mighty wide awake mornings if I do sleep nights when honest men ought to be in bed,” announced the proprietor of the “Pallace.” He rushed into his hotel, and clattered up-stairs.
“When the wheels of a scheme are running in good shape it’s best to stay away and keep your fingers out of the gearing,” I said to Kingsley. “We’ll go in and eat breakfast.”
While we ate, loud voices sounded through the thin walls. Men were crowding into the hotel office. Profanity, denunciation, denial, went on and on. The judge fingered his makeshift mustache uneasily every time the bawling of Pratt was heard.
“Better keep your hands off that and drink your coffee from your spoon,” I suggested. “They’ll never know you!”
When we were ready to leave the dining-room I warned the judge not to look at Pratt. We could hear him thundering away in the office.
Dragg and Pratt were surrounded by men; the landlord of the “Pallace,” the proprietor of the “Emporium,” and a grim man with a huge revolver in his hand and a deputy sheriff’s badge on his breast were right in the front row.
“You can swear, threaten, and deny till your tongues drop off—it don’t go for a minute with us,” declared the landlord, “for we all know your style and your nerve. Because you have got away with a lot of hold-ups in other places it doesn’t go that you can come here and do us in Royal City.”
“Do you think we’d be fools enough to go and put our names on—” began Dragg, but he was promptly interrupted by the landlord.
“Whose names would you put on if you were trying to steal land for yourselves? You thought we’d rather settle than fight, that’s what! But we’re going to fight.”
It was my turn—and my chance.
“Excuse me, gentlemen. I’m a stranger to you all—merely a passing tourist. But I feel it’s my duty to state that I heard two men discussing a matter of re-locating land last evening. They were in the next room to mine in this hotel. I recognize their voices. Those are the men.” I pointed to Dragg and Pratt.
The deputy poked the muzzle of his gun into Dragg’s face to make him stop swearing. “Shut up! Everybody can see that this is a real gent, and if he’s got evidence we want to hear it.”
“The evidence isn’t much,” I said, meekly, “but I distinctly heard them say that they could clean up a nice pile of money by a re-location scheme. It was to be bluff to a large extent. If that information is worth anything you’re welcome to it. I would hate to see the prosperity of a hustling city like this held up for one moment by men trying to bunco honest citizens.”
“You listen to me,” roared Dragg. “That hellhound there is lying like a—”
The sheriff slapped him across the mouth. “There’s no real gent gets insulted by you in Royal City while I’m boss of law and order here.”
Outdoors was a noise of clanking of whiffletrees and the “ruckling” of wheels. A stage-coach, mud-daubed from tongue to roof-rail, was pulling out of an opposite stable-yard.
“I’ve got to take that stage,” raved Dragg. “The whole of Royal City can’t stop me. I’ve been monkey-doodled by a shark. He’s trying to get there ahead of me. It wouldn’t work here. I’m no fool. I knew it wouldn’t work.” He yelled so loudly and talked so rapidly that they listened to him. “My scheme was for Breed—and it was a cinch! He’s stealing it from me—that doggone, lying plug-hatter found out that I was going to re-locate claims in—”
“Seem to be convicting yourself out of your own mouth!” broke in a citizen.
“I’m going to Breed by this stage. I’ve got to go!” gasped Dragg, twisting his throat from the sheriff’s clutch.
“You’re going into the calaboose right now—and Pratt is going there, too, and Dawlin is going as soon as they get his clothes on him,” declared the officer. “Grab a-holt, boys, and help me get on the wristers.”
“You men will stay here—and Dawlin, too, till we find out what you mean by this trick,” said my landlord. “You don’t get out of here to run away and file your location claims!”
“Send a man to the county-seat,” raged Pratt. “Look at the records. That will prove that we haven’t tried anything on here.”
“We don’t need any advice from you chaps as to what we shall do—whether it’s holding you for a show-down or shooting you out of this place when we have your numbers.”
I looked at Mr. Pratt. That remark started my think-works into action. I had my men anchored, to be sure, but that wasn’t getting me anything in the money line—and without doubt Royal City would cool down pretty quickly and send the men kiting. When they scooted they would go by rail, of course. That meant difficulties, the thought of which had already discouraged me. I needed to keep those chaps in the open—and the wilder the open the better! In the brush, where it was man to man, instead of in the city where law was safe and sane—and almighty slow! I needed to be quick and crazy!
Mr. Pratt was beginning to get his wits back. He was bellowing so wildly when I accused him and Dragg that he did not seem to sense the situation. He turned to me.
“Damn your lying tongue! What do you mean by putting up this job on me?”
“I have simply stated what I overheard!”
“Heard me say that I was going to jump claims? Why, I told Dragg I wouldn’t—”
“You told Dragg that you and your partner came down here on purpose to jump claims!”
He was so mad he was nigh black in the face. “Do I know you? Have I ever done dirt to you?”
I shook my head and looked him over with contempt. From the time I had left Levant I had been at a loss to decide what front I would put on when I met up with those men who had robbed the judge. I had thought all along that my best plan would be to build on my acquaintance with Jeff Dawlin and use his tips which were to put me next to the parties I was after. Then I might be able to come up on their blind side—if they had one—and—
Well, right there I had stopped. What could I do? Then I had been hooked by that infernal Dragg! In that mess with him I had allowed chance to swing me and our fortunes. After that squabble with Dragg I could not hope to make much of a hit with his associates, eh? Therefore, I was jumping for the other extreme and I proposed to make Mr. Pratt and his friends just as ugly as insults and injury could serve. I felt like a boy thumbing his nose at angry wildcats. And in my desperation I hoped that the wildcats would come chasing me. Chasing me where? Why not to Breed, wherever that might be?
I certainly was sure of Mr. Dragg, according to his threats and his promises. And if I could stick a few more darts into the broad flanks of Mr. Pratt and leave them stinging it was full likely that Mr. Dragg’s appeals to that gentleman would have much more effect than they did the night before.
A couple of citizens came dragging in another prisoner, a red-eyed and ferociously angry person, and I knew by Judge Kingsley’s expression that the round-up was complete.
“Who says I did it? Who says I—”
“I say so!” I told him. “You held me up and you asked me to buy twine and pencil for you.”
“That’s right,” stated the merchant. “The gent is right.”
“Of course it looked all square to me,” I said. “I never heard how claim-jumpers worked!” I told them. “I saw he had been drinking and I thought the string-and-pencil notion was only his bee buzzing!”
It was reckless lying, but that crowd was too much excited to bother with mere details.
“Why, you mutt-jawed smokestack, you, I never laid eyes on you in all my life!” raged Dawlin.
“I reckon my memory is a little better than yours, for I wasn’t drunk,” I reminded him.
The sheriff was obliged to assign two more men to the controlling of Mr. Dawlin, who was a husky chap. He was far too much occupied to pay any attention to the judge, who stood in a corner and goggled at me with plain and sure conviction that I had gone stark, staring crazy.
“I’ll bet you a thousand dollars,” roared Pratt, “that—”
“You’re a cheap tinhorn. You never saw a thousand dollars.”
Mr. Pratt jumped up and down and tried to throw off the clutch of the men who were holding him.
I felt perfectly safe in that crowd; I made up my mind to keep prodding till I was sure that Mr. Pratt and his friends had developed enough interest in me so that they would give up all other business till they had settled their grudges.
I patted my breast pocket. “I always carry ten thousand dollars around with me just to keep the draughts off my chest. I find money better than a folded newspaper,” I told him.
I had been keeping my eye on the stage-coach for some few minutes. It had hauled up at the post-office. The driver came out with mail-bags and tossed them into the boot.
“Landlord, will you fetch our valises?” I asked.
“Certainly, sir!”
“I’ve got a few thousand in my own pocket,” yelled Pratt.
“So have I!” howled Dawlin.
“And we’ll spend it getting to you,” they shouted in chorus.
“It won’t cost you much to chaseme,” I said, provokingly. “Cheap skates of your sort wouldn’t spend much getting to a man you’re afraid of.”
That taunt, in the ears of those bystanders, made Pratt and his cronies wild in earnest.
“I’m only going as far as Breed,” I said. “I’ve got to stay there for some time on business. When these good folks let you out of jail suppose you run over and call on me!”
“You don’t dare to wait there for us!” said Dawlin.
“I’ll bet you five thousand I do dare!”
They didn’t take me up on that bet. Perhaps I seemed too certain that I meant what I said. I intended to seem certain. I wanted the company of those gentlemen in Breed, no matter what the risks were. And I was mighty glad when Mr. Pratt and Mr. Dawlin had bragged about the thousands they had in their pockets. I looked into the glittering eyes of Pratt and I knew that even in his fury he was taking much comfort in his belief that I was giving him a straight tip about Breed.
“You don’t dare to hang up over there till I come,” he snarled, testing me out.
“If I am not there, I’ll hand over five hundred dollars to start a city reading-room here,” I declared. “I call on these gentlemen to bear witness.”
“I hope we won’t get the reading-room,” stated the landlord, standing with the luggage, “for I want to see a few fresh galoots get theirs.”
“It’s time to test out whether respectable business men can go about in this country without being insulted and bothered by rascals,” I observed. “Come over to Breed after Royal City gets done with you.” And just to clinch the thing I snapped my fingers under Pratt’s nose when I passed him.
I just naturally knew, that moment, that Mr. Pratt had made a binding appointment with me.
The landlord had hailed the stage, which was surging past through the mud. I was obliged to push the judge to start him toward the door; he seemed to be in a daze.
“But we’ve got to stay here,” he croaked in my ear. “They’ve got the money on ’em. They brag about it. You’ll never lay eyes on them again!”
I hurried him along the plank walk toward the coach. “Don’t fret one mite about that part, sir. If we stay here all we can do is stand outside the calaboose and ask ’em to push our money out through the bars. And I’m afraid they are not feeling generous enough just now.”
“But the law will keep them—”
“No, it won’t, sir, if I’m any judge of the sporting blood out here. Royal City will be mighty curious to find out what happens when Mr. Pratt and his friends arrive in Breed. And they’ll come! Don’t worry!”
But the judge was a stubborn old customer! He kept holding back.
“Why not settle it with ’em here?”
“Because I have always read that when a good general has a chance to do it, he picks his own battle-ground and throws up his earthworks before the enemy heaves in sight. I have picked Breed, sir! As to the earthworks, I’ll do some meditating on the way.”
Already my handy Mr. Dragg had given me the germ of a notion, though, of course, he had not meant to make me any presents.