I WAS too much upset to go to sleep very early that night, even though Dodovah Vose had given me another of those slumber-coaxing suppers of fried chicken.
So Zebulon Kingsley was ruined, according to his own tell!
But what else besides ruin was fronting him? I knew him and the stuff that was in him. When a man like the judge came humping back to his home town, packing a gun on each hip and headed for his woods, there to do himself destruction, it meant something more than that he was flat broke. The fact that he had two guns suggested that he did not propose to take any chances on failure.
His troubles might have skeow-wowed his mind temporarily, I pondered. The fact that he had given me, one of the despised Sidneys, a half-dozen decent words hinted at aberration, as I thought upon the matter. I hoped that he would stay crazy long enough so that he would allow me to poke myself still further into his affairs and his family, and show me a little appreciation. Up to that time I certainly had been using ax and crowbar on the intimacy proposition!
It was my conviction that he would be obliged to be pretty nice to me from that time on. I knew something very private and personal in regard to Judge Kingsley, Levant magnate! All at once I found myself feeling rather like sticking my thumbs in my vest armholes and showing condescension to that man who had loomed so largely before my admiration. At any rate, no Sidney had ever committed suicide or had tried to, unless it might be hinted that it mightily resembled suicide when my father ran the ridge-pole of the Butler barn after wetting down the occasion with a quart or so of hard cider.
I felt decidedly cocky when I started over to his house the next morning. I had his secret—I had manhandled him to save his life. A man might make up his mind to commit suicide, thought I, and then be particularly and almighty grateful, after a night’s sleep, because some chap happened along at the right time and stopped him before he had made a fool of himself.
I headed for the front door like a friend of the family.
Judge Kingsley opened his office door in the ell and called to me.
“I do not transact business in my home,” he informed me, stiffly. He tapped the sign beside his door. “Z. Kingsley” was its sole inscription, curtly hinting that no further information was needed regarding that gentleman. “I do all business in my office, sir.”
I don’t know in just what condition I had been expecting to find the judge, and I had not planned how I would act when I met him, but I know mighty well I had not calculated on the sort of meeting we did have.
I found him just as I had found him in times past when we had had a word or so together—and that was my surprise that day!
I would not have been much astonished if he had fallen on my neck and sobbed out his gratitude; I rather looked for some demonstration. To find him the same old, cold, stiff ramrod was outside all my anticipations. I went in meekly and sat down.
“In the matter of the wood-lot,” he said, perfectly at ease and putting that jew’s-harp twang in his nose. “I have looked the contracts over. Young man, I don’t know whether to compliment you as one of the smartest business men I have ever met, or to have you arrested for an attempt at grand larceny!”
I did not know what to say to that, and sat and fiddled my finger across the brim of my plug-hat.
He put out his hand. “Please allow me to look at that receipt I gave you.”
I handed it over—obedient as a pup. He read it and tore it up.
“It is as irregular a document as your operations have been irregular. I will give you a deed, taking back your note and a mortgage—”
“But I want no deed, sir. I said so to you last evening. I don’t want the land. You keep it.”
He gave me a chilly stare. “My price of two thousand dollars was on the lot—not merely the wood on the lot. The land will be yours when we have passed our papers. I don’t know why I should place myself under obligations to you by any such foolish child’s play as you suggest.” Say, I felt myself slipping out of the Kingsley family circle as if I were going down a cellar slide in a puddle of soft soap. I made a desperate clutch.
“Judge Kingsley,” I said, “I made you another offer last night. I offered to turn the whole proposition over to you—profits and all! I had no business starting in on the operation. If you are in some sort of trouble—”
“Who said I was in trouble?”
“You said so last evening,” I faltered.
“Have you told anybody I said so, sir?” he demanded, sharply.
“No, sir! Certainly not.”
“If you permit yourself to hint that to anybody I shall promptly brand you as a falsifier and have you before the court on the charge of slander. You must realize that I could secure large damages because a financial man’s reputation forms his stock in trade. I could have you sent to prison on a criminal charge.”
“I don’t see any need of your sitting there and threatening me in that fashion,” I protested, with some heat. “I have tried to help you—”
“I have not asked for any of your help—I do not need it, sir.”
“I don’t suppose you do,” I admitted, sourly.
“Certainly not!”
I couldn’t figure what his game was—it was his own business, anyway—but I did not propose to have him sneering at me. His manner when he said, “Certainly not!” was mighty nasty. I rose and kicked my chair away from me.
“You needn’t show any gratitude if you don’t feel like it, Judge Kingsley. You’ll never hear a word from me about anything that has happened, but I’m not keeping still because you have threatened me. I’m keeping my mouth shut because I’m man enough to do so! And, by gad! I hope you’re man enough, on your side, to show me a little decency and to remember that you have a wife and daughter to protect from scandal and shame. Good day!” I put on my hat and marched out.
I’m making due allowance for the judge’s state of mind, but truly that old hyampus did have the natural ability to stir a man’s temper. A Kingsley and a Sidney got along together about as well as the two parts of a Seidlitz powder do when they meet in a glass of water!
I slammed the door after me, but I had gone only a few feet when I remembered that I had left behind my contracts. Furthermore, I had not finished my business in regard to the deed and the payments. So I whirled and went back in without stopping to knock.
It was as if he had been playing a part with me with a mask to hide his face! He had laid down the mask.
I looked on a fairly hideous scroll of awful, utter woe. That was his face. He was crumpled down in his chair. He did not look at me. I picked up the packet.
“Are you ready to attend to the matter of the deed, sir?”
He wagged his head weakly from side to side. “Later!” he muttered. “Come later. Come this evening, perhaps.”
I went down into the woods and hunted for hours until I found those two revolvers. That face of his was before me all the time. I expected to look up and find him hunting, too. There were other ways of committing suicide than by shooting, but I did not propose to leave those revolvers around loose, seeing that he had made up his mind to use that means of shuffling off. That face which he had exposed to me showed that Judge Kingsley’s soul was near the limit of endurance.
I went about that day sick with fear. My helplessness in the matter was maddening. He was holding me off with his disdain like a man holding an enemy at bay with a pitchfork. And I knew that even if he gave me his confidence there was little a poor devil of my caliber could do in affairs such as his must be.
I wondered if the knowledge that he was ruined was behind his desperate resolve to die. Of course he had a lot of pride, but other proud men had failed in business and lived through it.
I was obliged to confess to myself that the judge must have a deeper motive. I remembered my uncle’s threats and wondered what that disturber had up his sleeve.
I almost whipped my courage up to the point of tackling him on the subject, but when I met him on the street in the afternoon and fronted his savage scowl I walked right on past, minding my own little business. His face had an extra touch of flame in it that day. That he had something special on the docket was plain to be seen. I went down to the wood-lot and checked up with Henshaw Hook so as to be out of my uncle’s way. His looks rather scared me. Just as I was walking away from the wood-lot at dusk he hopped out of his wagon ahead of me and tacked a printed paper to a wayside tree, glowering at me while I waited at a little distance. It was evident that he meant that paper especially for my attention.
So I walked up and had a look at it when he was out of the way.
It called a special town meeting thirty days from that date. As was necessary in a call of that sort, the purpose of the meeting was stated: “To see what action the town will take to pay off its indebtedness in full. Notice is hereby given that all creditors of the town must present notes or other evidences of claims at that meeting on the 15th day of April.”
What did that call signify in the case of Zebulon Kingsley, town treasurer? I had seen behind his mask and I guessed! If I guessed rightly he would feel, when his eyes fell on that paper, like a man who had been notified of the date of his execution.
I started on toward the village, and when I passed Brickett’s duck-pond I threw the revolvers into the water.
I hurried to Judge Kingsley’s house, for I had the excuse of business, and he himself had made the appointment. There was a light in his office, but it went out suddenly when I was some distance away. I started to run, and then I checked myself. I decided that caution rather than haste was needed. I was right. Standing behind a tree, I saw him come out of the office door in a sneaking fashion, the early evening hiding him. He went around the house, and I followed. Young eyes can see in the dark better than old ones, and he did not spy me where I stood in the dusk, watching him hack off with a jack-knife a section of the family clothes-line.
Stooping and almost staggering he went down into the orchard, and I trod close behind him undetected, for the trees plastered shadows into which I dodged. I waited until he had settled a noose around his neck and had thrown an end of the cord over a limb. I was taking no chances on having any misunderstanding between Judge Kingsley and myself that trip. In my own way I was just about as desperate as he was. I marched up to him, took him by both arms and pushed him against the tree-trunk.
He was in such a state, physically and mentally, that he did not protest or resist; it did not seem to frighten him specially to be overhauled in that fashion. Honestly, I felt like spanking his face as I would have whipped a child. This game of “tag the suicide” was getting on my nerves.
“Judge Kingsley, you need a guardian and I have appointed myself one,” I told him, and I was mighty resolute, for I had determined to brace up to him with all the power in me. “You have no right to kill yourself, and you’re not going to kill yourself, by gad! not if I have to camp with you day and night till you get back your nerve. I’m going to take you straight to your folks and tell ’em you’re out of your head temporarily and will have to be taken to a hospital!”
That brought him out of his numbness, and I knew it would. I believe he would have struck me if his arms had been free. But I needed to have him in another mood than the fighting one. I hit him hard.
“You’re an embezzler!” I cracked out. “How much?” He crumpled, and I let him slide down and sit on the ground, his back against the tree. It was the first time he had ever had that word put to him from man’s mouth, even though he may have confessed to himself in his heart.
“Judge Kingsley,” I said, bravely, knowing that I had an advantage from then on, “I’m only a young man and I know you don’t think much of me. But I’m going to grab in on this thing, whether you want me to or not. I have special reasons of my own. I’ll do everything I can to balk my uncle.”
“You’re a spy he has set on me!”
“You’re a liar!” I wasn’t going to take any of his sneers or his abuse. I hated to talk to him as I did, but only by being coarse and rough and bossy could I hope to pound anything helpful into him.
He stared up at me with his jaw hanging down and I did not let up on my punches.
“I have tried to head off my uncle Deck. I have told him straight out that I am for you and against him. He and I don’t speak to each other. I have promised your wife and your daughter that I’ll do everything I can to beat my uncle out in this thing. They don’t understand it! I don’t understand it all. But, before God, my promise to them is holy, even if you do not believe in me! I’m in this affair and I’m in to stay.”
He began to wag his head as he had done before that day. “Brace up, Judge Kingsley! You’re not licked yet!”
“Those three selectmen have signed my death-warrant. That notice which has been posted!”
I saw that I had him going and I kept him going. “But when an embezzler stays alive and does his best to straighten matters—”
“Don’t call me that name!” he groaned.
“If you will take me into your confidence, Judge Kingsley, so that I can turn to and help you, I swear before Almighty Jehovah that I will set to work for you with body and soul. I can help you—I know I can help. No man can feel as I feel and be useless! But let me tell you this much on the other side!” I bent down and snapped my finger under his nose. That was no time for half-way and mealy-mouthed stuff. “If you throw me down after this honest offer, it means that you think I’m too cheap to be of use and too low to associate with. And that’s an insult I’ll never swallow! So help me, I’ll drag you up into the village with that rope around your neck and blow the whole business and hand you over to those who will take care of you. I will! My mind is made up. Take your choice!”
I am sure that with no less bitter alternative could I have jounced any of his secrets out of Zebulon Kingsley.
“I’m just enough of a hellion to do that very thing if you don’t treat me right,” I warned him, angrily.
“You leave me no choice in the matter,” he mourned. “You are—”
“Look out, sir! I’m doing what I’m doing out of pure and honest desire to help you. I want fair treatment.”
“Nothing can make my situation worse than it is, I suppose,” he stated, after meditating for a time. “On the fifteenth day of April it will become known in town meeting that more than ten thousand dollars of town notes are out, drawing interest and bearing my name as town treasurer. I have issued those notes without warrant.”
“But the people who hold them know they are out!” He was coldly, numbly patient with me, the untamed animal who had promised to pounce on him and drag him to his shame in the village.
“I have borrowed the money in various small lots and in each case the note-holder is keeping absolutely still in order to escape taxation.”
“But great Scott! Judge Kingsley, ten thousand dollars for a rich man like you—”
“I am no longer rich. I am ruined. I cannot take up those town notes prior to the meeting. So I shall be arrested as a criminal! I have lost money intrusted to me for investment, but though I have lost it I cannot be prosecuted criminally—it was breach of trust. I hoped to get money to stave off exposure in the criminal matter so that I could set myself to earning more money and restoring what I owe to the investors. But I have not been able to raise that money. That’s why I decided to kill myself. I knew I couldn’t face it!”
“Did you just find out that you couldn’t raise the money, sir?”
He looked up at me, shame and agony in his face showing even in the dark. It began to swell in him—I could see it in his eyes—that longing which comes to every man in deep trouble—the wild hankering to confide in somebody—to rush into confession, to unload the heart, to speak the words which have been pressing to the lips. I was only Ross Sidney, to be sure, but I was a man and Judge Kingsley had been bottling his grief for a long time.
“What I did last was worst of all! Nobody could have convinced me that I would ever do such a piece of folly. Think of me doing such a thing—a man used to the ways of money! A financier! Oh, I have been dreading the scorn, the sneers, the ridicule more than I have dreaded the exposure of my town notes! I want to die!”
“What have you done, sir?”
“My investments were good in years past! I knew how to handle money—but what I did a few days ago!”
“What was it, Judge?” He had been hesitating between his declarations, and therefore I kept prodding him. But confession of his last affair seemed to stick in his throat.
“Oh, I am not guilty—I am not ashamed because I lost money in my investments! The pirates who have manipulated this country’s industrials and wrecked the railroads are the guilty ones—they should be ashamed of what they did to the honest investors! But that I should run the scale of speculation as I have—to the depths! Down, down, as I got more desperate! And that I should do what I have just done when I was most desperate—when your uncle was rushing me toward a cell door!”
He twisted his fingers together and cracked his knuckles.
I felt like a man waiting for a woodchuck to come out of his hole—getting an occasional glimpse of a nose and seeing it everlastingly dodging back.
“But I had to have money quick. I had lost my grip. I could not raise more money in a regular way.”
“When I was in the city I heard swindlers talk about such men, sir. There are blacklegs who go about the country hunting for such men. Have you been swindled?”
“Foully—vilely!”
“How?”
He hooked his fingers inside his collar as if speech had stuck in his throat.
“Laugh!” he advised me. He was as hoarse as a crow and looked as crazy as a coot. “Go ahead and laugh! I may as well get used to the ridicule.”
“I don’t feel much like laughing at anything these days, Judge Kingsley. I wish that you could understand me better and know how sorry—”
“Yes, and you and everybody else will pity me as a fool to be classed in with the other fools who are gulled by the shell-and-pea game.”
“For the sake of Mike, what have you done?” I demanded with a bit of temper, for I was in no frame of mind to guess riddles.
“I—Zebulon Kingsley—a financier, a man supposed to be in his right mind,” he squealed, beating his breast as he struggled to his feet, “I bought a gold brick!”
WHILE I blinked at Zebulon Kingsley through the gloom I remembered what “Cricket” Welch had once said to me, in one of those sessions where I lapped up information as greedily as a kitten laps milk. He had a flow of language, “Cricket” had, and I wish I could remember his words more accurately. But it was something like this:
“Why should any crook bring on brain-fag by thinking up new ones when the old ones, with gears smoothed by twenty-five centuries of steady operation, work so much better? As long ago as old Solomon was figuring on Temple estimates with the architects, and had quite a reputation in the country round about, a little chap dropped into a village outside of Babylon and gave out that he was The Old Boy’s son by Wife 411, and was interested in King Solomon’s mines along with his dad. Then he unloaded a gold brick on to a village sucker, first making the sucker believe that the latter was a buttonhole relation of the Solomon family.”
I was running that speech over in my mind while I looked at the judge, a little uncertain what to say to him under the circumstances.
“And yet, the fraud did not seem to be barefaced while they were at work on me,” lamented the old gentleman. “One of them, the one who came to town first, was the son of one of my old schoolmates who went West when he was young and has been settled there ever since. Young Blake was East on business and dropped into Levant to look the old town over; his father told him to make himself known to me, so that he could carry back news of the folks his father used to know here.”
And in my book of notes I had set down the detail of just such a scheme as that!
“They always have a skirmisher ahead of the main push,” I blurted. “He finds out about somebody who settled West—and then along comes the son.”
“What’s that?” demanded Kingsley. “What do you know about it?”
“Then, after the son is well settled, along comes one of father’s partners, East, to sell stock, and he has a sample of the clean-up—a big hunk of gold—and it’s always a real ingot, too.”
“It was real,” insisted the judge, passionately. “I went to the city and had it tested by a jeweler who is a friend of mine. They offered me a chance to make money on account of my old friendship. It did not seem like a gold-brick game. I could not believe it was. I did not dare to believe it was. I needed money so badly!”
“But it was, sir.”
“I mortgaged, I borrowed, I pawned! They offered me a chance to make money because I was a prominent man and could help them sell their stock. They wanted me to be sure that the proposition was a good one—that the gold was honest. They took my last five thousand dollars! My God! I bought a gold brick! I bought it like other fools have bought.”
“They always put new trimmings on the old game, Judge Kingsley, and make it look attractive.”
He looked at me strangely and did not answer.
“I suppose they worked it as usual,” I went on, feeling just a bit proud of my knowledge. I reflected that he might be more thankful for his volunteer if I showed him that I was no greenhorn. His mouth had been running away with him in his wild eagerness to unload the sorrows from his soul. All at once he was showing symptoms of stiffening a bit, as if he wondered why he had opened his heart to such a one as Ross Sidney.
I needed all his confidence—the flow was lessening—and so I “shot the well,” as the oil fellows say.
“After they had given you all kinds of nice entertainment in the city, you started for home and opened your package on the train and found a lead junk and a letter advising you to go home and keep still and never believe strangers again.”
“That letter—that insult!” he gasped.
“They told you they were starting straight for Europe, and they—”
“So that is what you were in the city for, eh? A blackleg—one of them! Your brazen cheek—your flashy clothes—”
“No, Judge Kingsley, I never tried to sell gold bricks. But it came my way to find out a lot about those fellows who do sell them.”
“Yes, you flashy cheat!” he snarled. “You are like that other one! Waistcoats like chromos! Tricked out with gewgaws—airs of a peacock!”
That last word sent a thrill through me, put an idea into my head.
“Was he a big man, Judge Kingsley? Was his name Pratt?”
“No.”
“But he brought the gold! He claimed to be the partner. He had a smear like grease across his cheek—a scar. He—”
“You seem to know your confederates very well, sir.”
“Judge Kingsley, you listen to me! I have never seen those men face to face, but I have heard of them. I have heard of their tricks. I know how they operate. I know a good many of their lurking-places. I have made it my business to know!” I noted that he was still suspicious, and I put my face close to his and lied with all the fervor that was in me. I needed his confidence, I say. “I did work as a detective until the dirty mess of crooks made me sick of the job. I can help you in this thing! Depend on me! I’m going to help!”
“I have about given up belief in everything!”
“Give me your hand, sir, and promise me you’ll offer a good front to the world. Nobody must guess that you’re in difficulties. As for the noises my uncle is making, he has never said anything definite; he is merely making threats. Everybody knows about his grudge and folks don’t take much stock in him. If you keep a stiff upper lip nobody will guess.”
“But they all will know on the fifteenth of April.”
“If we can grab in ten thousand dollars before then—”
“Do you stand there, young man, and tell me you have the crazy idea that you can pull any of my money back from those scoundrels?”
“Yes, and more with it,” I returned, much more bold in my tone than I was in my heart. But when I knew that I had the “Peacock” Pratt gang identified—and probably had located Jeff Dawlin’s brother as the man who planted the fraud, posing as the son, his usual rôle, certain wild hopes and dizzy schemes went to whirling in my head.
“We ought to have three thousand in cash in a short time to—”
“A client—a widow is pressing me for money. It amounts to about that sum,” he said, dolefully.
“Does she suspect—”
“No, no!” he snapped, irritably. “She is going to be married again, the fool, and wants to hand it to her new husband.” He showed a flicker of pride in the midst of his troubles. “There is nobody calling Zebulon Kingsley a thief as yet, except himself and your uncle. I know that I am and he suspects,” he added, bitterly.
“Then the woman must have her money, sir. We must keep everybody from even suspecting for a time.”
I took both his hands in mine. He did need comfort and sympathy, even such as I could offer him.
“I’m square with you, Judge Kingsley. I know how to find those men. I’ll go after them. And I know you’ll do your part to help me. I only ask you to buck up! Let nobody suspect!”
“I ought to doubt every man in the world after what I have been through! I ought to doubt you! Why are you doing all this for me, sir?” he demanded, and then I was glad it was dark there under the tree. I must have revealed confusion aplenty. “I have never shown you any favors, young man. It has been the other way. I never liked your breed.”
“I know that, Judge Kingsley, but—” I could not go any further at the moment.
“Well?”
“You see,” I gulped, “when I was a little shaver you gave me a quarter and I bought a catechism and studied it and—I guess—I’m quite sure—it made a better boy, and—”
It wasn’t convincing, that talk wasn’t! He caught me up sharply:
“The truth isn’t in you, young Sidney!”
“You told me that once before. And it has been my ambition to show you that you were wrong.”
“Bah! I know human nature too well to believe any such rot.”
“But you always stood up in Sunday-school, sir, and told us about Christian charity and meekness and forgiveness. You believe in all that, don’t you?”
“I have no confidence in you—not now!”
“Not when I’m trying to prove to you that I’m one of those practical Christians?”
“Do not insult me with any more of that balderdash, sir!”
I had just as much of nasty temper as he had, and mine began to flare up in me. I knew that my motives were all right, though I did not dare to reveal them to him—and my innocence made me the more angry.
“You would have made a big hit with the good Samaritan when he came along and offered his help after you had fallen among thieves,” I snapped. “I reckon you have never practised any of the charity you have preached. I have never preached, but I am practising! You don’t seem to recognize your own religion when you see it acted out instead of being merely printed in a book!”
“You’re a renegade, convicting yourself out of your own mouth!”
Oh, what was the use! I walked off a little way. Then I turned on him.
“I have my own reasons for wanting to help you, Judge Kingsley, no matter what you believe about me. But if you feel as you talk, you can go to blazes just as soon as you like. I’m not going to try to round up all the revolvers, ropes, and razors in this town. That rope you have there seems to be a good strong one. Go as far as you like! And I’ll keep on in my way and will turn the money over to your estate—to your wife and your daughter. You are not the first coward who has knocked out the last prop and sluiced all the mess on to his women folks! Go on! I’ll be furnishing your wife bread and butter while you’re having insomnia in hell!”
Then I went back to the tavern.
I knew well enough that Zebulon Kingsley would not kill himself that night. In the first place, he was too mad. He came behind me, chattering his teeth like an angry squirrel. Then, again, I had stirred his curiosity, even if I had not given him any special hope. And my threat about handling his money after he had gone was enough to keep Zebulon Kingsley hanging around on top of the earth for a time. I knew his nature mighty well. I would have taken those means with him at first, but I had been hoping that he would accept me on a friendlier basis where I might coddle my hopes; and here was I handling him by the scruff of the neck!
I caught a glimpse of Celene through the sitting-room window when I passed the house. The light was behind her and her hair was like an angel’s halo. Ah! there was the inspiration which was keeping me on the lunatic’s job I had picked out for myself! As for that old hornbeam father, I was in a state of fury which prompted me to go back, use his ears for handles, and kick him around his premises until he promised to behave himself—and give me his daughter when my task was finished. Well, at least I had reached one interesting stage in my development—I was acting as guardian of the high and mighty Zebulon Kingsley and was rather despising my ward!
That evening I sat till late and went through my notebook and studied the affiliations, the methods, the lurking-places and all other information I had recorded in regard to one “Peacock” Pratt and his associates.
It seemed to me that I had a pretty good start on the thing, even though the future was, as Jodrey Vose used to say of dock water, in a “nebulous and gummy condition.”
But I went to bed, nevertheless, in a considerably exalted state of mind. With every day that passed I was getting farther into the affairs of the Kingsley family—and getting into those affairs—
I dreamed of Celene that night, but that was not a matter for special record; I dreamed of her every night.
In the morning I put on a business suit I had bought “off the pile” in Mechanicsville. I had wanted to show Levant that I had more than one suit of clothes. I reckoned that I would feel more sane and solid in that suit. And I did feel that way when I went down to breakfast. If ever a man had business ahead of him I was that one!
But that sane and normal feeling did not sit well on my conscience. I found myself brooding and getting depressed. I wondered why I had felt so exalted and optimistic the night before. How could I have made such confident promises to Kingsley?
While I sawed at that prosaic hunk o’ ham the notion of chasing up those knaves and getting my clutch on that stolen money—or any other money—seemed just a hopeless dream. It was surely a crazy idea; I sat there and looked down into my plate and so decided. For all of a quarter-hour I mulled and gloomed there, wondering what had happened to make me so dull and disheartened and doped. I woke up to what the matter was—woke all of a sudden. It was that blamed ready-made suit of clothes!
I was simply plain Ross Sidney! I was right down on the plane of all the men around me. I looked like a tank-town commercial drummer and felt like one. I had no more imagination or horizon than a grocery clerk. All the fantastic spirit of adventure had gone out of me. Perhaps it may be thought that mere clothes cannot do all that to a man! Well, wear overalls to the next grand ball! I’m no psychologist and I have never read Carlyle’s essay on clothes, though I am told he describes about what I have felt. I’m merely saying this: when I realized what was the matter with me and felt certain that I needed to be comfortably crazy in order to keep up my dip—why, do you suppose I would ever have tried to bark in front of that show if I had been dressed in a sack-suit?
Yes, comfortably crazy!
I rushed, up-stairs and shifted to my knight-errant regalia. Then I went to my job on the run. I reckoned that I was going to be in a devil of a hurry for a while!
I galloped down to the wood-lot, my plug-hat riding tilted back like the funnel of a racing steamer. Those choppers were hearty and happy and were hustling for that bonus; if a few laggards needed pep I injected it. I made estimates, got every hitch in Levant which would cart wood and drag timber and started the cut for the railroad.
The freight-trains picked up the gondola cars as they were ready.
I rushed to the cities and arranged for deliveries, pulled down first payments in good season to settle wages for a week, as agreed with Henshaw Hook, and shuttled back and forth until all the cut was cleaned up on the lot. Gad! how I was counting days! I did not waste any time on Judge Kingsley. I realized that the more I kept away from him, the more I kept him guessing!
I grabbed my first opportunity to take a day off the job and run down to the big city; I made that jump from one of the towns where I was handling the last deliveries—for I could not make final collections until the railroad completed its haul, and so I had a little time to spare.
There was another barker at the door of Dawlin’s place, and I noted with gratification that he was a rather seedy chap. The blonde looked acutely surprised and showed apprehension when I walked right in past her. Plainly, her man had been making some promises as to what he would do to me if I ever showed up again.
And the first glance Dawlin gave me when he looked up from his gazara envelopes showed that he was quite ready to keep his promises.
I beckoned him to his office and walked in there and waited for him. He came on the jump. He was at me almost before I had time to place my plug-hat out of the way of possible damage.
When Mr. Dawlin would close a gazara game right at a moment when suckers were shoving money at him, it was proof that he was specially interested in something else which was almighty important. His language when he burst in on me made it plain that his interest in me was not flattering, though it was intense.
“Oh, if it’s that little, foolish, petty matter of the few dollars you handed back to those yaps,” I broke in, after I had pushed him back with a swoop of my arm—and, as I have stated, it was a hard arm—“here’s your small change.”
In my wood business I had promptly changed checks into cash. I pulled out before the lustful eyes of Mr. Dawlin a roll of bills big enough to make a pillow for his Mormon Giant, and I carelessly flipped the edges to show him they were yellowbacks.
“What did the little matter amount to?” I asked, airily.
“Six and twenty-two fifty—and I tossed ’em a five,” he said, trying to make a quick shift from passion to pacification.
“And I guess the drinks are on me this time, Jeff,” I said, adding a ten-dollar bill to the amount. “Go buy the kind you like.”
“But what in—”
“This tells all the story,” I said, tapping the roll and stuffing it back.
“But your partners—leaving me in the lurch—not inviting me in for a drag—”
“It had to be a lone play, Jeff—just had to be! But don’t think I have all the money in the world cornered in my pocket, even if it looks like it. And I’m not back here simply to give you a treat by letting you look at it. I have located a bigger bundle—but it can’t be coopered by a lone play.”
“Job for the gang, hey?” he asked, almost drooling.
“Well, for the right operators if they’re the real goods. But no amateurs, you know!”
“Condemn it! I have told you about my brother. He’s one of the best in the country! Has just pulled off a killing—not very big, but easy and profitable.”
“Where?”
“Nothing doing on the where!” replied Mr. Dawlin, warily. “That’s all done and the money counted. We always forget where as soon as the money is counted.” He fingered his nose. “Where is—” he started.
“Same tag,” I said, smartly. “You forget and I don’t remember. All is, it’s there waiting. Can we all get together?”
“When?”
“To-day.”
“Blast it all! you ought to know that we can’t all get together to-day—nor a week from to-day!” He showed some suspicion.
“Why should I know that?” I looked him in the eye. “When a job is done East, why, you know yourself they all shoot West—clear to the—”
“You didn’t tell me the last job was done East,” I said, coolly.
“Well, it was. I can say that much. And they’re on their way West—they’re going over the Rockies.”
“Then I guess I’ll declare them out on the job, Jeff. I’m in with some of the other—”
“But that’s no way to use a friend like I’ve been to you! This thing ought to be put up to Ike and ‘Peacock.’ You must remember that I offered you a lay with them! I tried to use you right. You ought to show some gratitude.”
He was fairly whining in his anxiety, but I was mighty careful about showing any eagerness of my own. I scratched my ear and looked rather doubtful and displayed indifference.
“Of course I can’t write to ’em—we never write, especially soon after a job. But I have their bearings, Ross. I can put you right on to their trail. They have a job on below the Potlatch country in Idaho. First East and then West—get the idea? It’s something about land—this operation. You’re bound to bump into ’em; there are not so many men out there as there are here.”
“Still, it looks to me like a wild-goose chase,” I demurred, hoping to be assured that it was no such thing.
“‘Peacock’ isn’t going to change his style! He’s too far away to be obliged to bother—and he sure does like his togs! You can’t hide ‘Peacock’ Pratt if you surround him with a whole county. You’ll find him easy, and my brother will be right on the wheel. Wait! If you don’t know that country I’ll jot down directions and names for you—names of men to ask. I’ll give you a word or two for a passport!” He grabbed paper and pen and began to scribble. “What extra the trip costs will be added to your lay. You’ll find them square if you get in with them,” he assured me while he wrote. “You don’t have to discuss any lay for me. My brother always sees to it that I get my pickings from any job I help him to.”
He fairly thrust the paper into my hands when he had finished. Really, I was more grateful inside than I allowed to appear in my thanks. I could hardly ask Mr. Dawlin to do more in setting me on the trail of the men I was after. The humor of the thing certainly did appeal to me—and I needed a little something for cheer just then.
Whether I would try to pick their pockets when I arrived up with them, or knock them down with a dub, or what I would do I left to the future. I had enough to think of just then—that wood business to wind up and the matter of the future handling of Zebulon Kingsley to attend to—and a crazy chase across the continent ahead of me!
I tucked the paper deep, slapped Mr. Dawlin on the back, and hustled for up-country.