CHAPTER VIII. THE COLONEL TRIES PERSUASION.

For a few moments McGlory struggled in the grasp of Colonel Billings. He was excited, and angry over the way Matt had been treated, and he would not have hesitated to do the colonel an injury if he could thereby have escaped from the room and followed his pard.

“Quiet!” ordered the colonel sternly. “You don’t understand this thing, McGlory, or you wouldn’t be fighting to escape from me. I’m the best friend you ever had, if you only knew it.”

“Nary, you ain’t!” panted the cowboy. “My best friend just risked his neck dropping out of the window. You’re trying to get me into trouble, and Pard Matt is trying to keep me out. Take your hands off me, colonel!”

“I will, Joe, just as soon as you promise to sit still and hear what I have to say.”

McGlory reflected that it was too late to follow Matt, who was probably doing his best to evade Levitt and the others who were hot on his trail. The cowboy reasoned that he could find his chum later, and that there could be no harm in listening to what the colonel had to say.

“Go on,” said he curtly.

“You’ll stay right where you are until I’m done?” asked the colonel.

“Yes.”

Billings drew back, dropped into a chair, and laid a friendly hand on the cowboy’s knee. His voice changed, sounding the depths of friendly interest and personal regard.

“Joe,” he remarked, “ever since your father took the One-way Trail I’ve sort of felt that I was responsible for your welfare. I knew your father mighty well--better than any one else in Tucson, I reckon--and him and me was bosom friends.”

McGlory had no personal knowledge on this point, but he was willing to take the colonel’s word for it.

“If I can do anything for Joe,” the colonel went on, “I says to myself that I won’t leave a stone unturned to do it. When the ‘Pauper’s Dream’ proposition came under my management I knew I had the chance I wanted to turn your way. I sold you a hundred shares of the stock at five dollars a share, and we went on to develop the claim.”

“And there wasn’t any more gold in the shaft,” spoke up the cowboy dryly, “than there was in a New England well.”

“That’s what everybody thought,” returned the colonel, “but I knew better.”

He got up, went to the table, and helped himself to a drink from the decanter.

“Better have a nip, son, eh?” he asked, as by an afterthought, before leaving the table.

“Not for me,” replied McGlory stoutly. “Pard Matt don’t believe in that sort of thing, and I get along better when I make his notions my own. I’ve found that out more than once.”

The colonel sighed resignedly, but did not press the point. Returning to his chair, he continued his persuasions.

“I knew when I sold you that stock that there was a reef of rich gold ore under the ‘Pauper’s Dream.’ I didn’t want it found until the right minute. Those who had bought stock in the claim got scared. Some of them sold their stock back to me for a song. When I’d got enough of the stock to give me a controlling interest _I found the gold vein_.”

“That was a double play,” said McGlory bluntly. “There wasn’t anything fair about that, colonel.”

“It was all fair. Some of the stockholders were trying to freeze me out. By letting them think there wasn’t any gold in the ‘Dream’ I turned the tables and froze _them_ out. It was simply a game of diamond cut diamond--and I was a little too sharp for my enemies. That was all right, wasn’t it?”

McGlory thought the colonel had a fair excuse for acting as he had done.

“When we laid open that gold vein,” pursued the colonel, “buyers flocked around the ‘Pauper’s Dream’ like crows around a cornfield. They wanted to buy. I saw a chance to deal with this New York syndicate for big money, so I had the syndicate send out an expert to examine our property. Levitt came. I asked him to make out a true report for the syndicate and a private, false report for--other uses.”

McGlory opened his eyes.

“I see I’ve got you guessing,” laughed the colonel gently. “This is how that private report came to be made out--that private report on which your misguided friend has built such a fabric of unjust suspicions. The men I had frozen out of the company began to threaten legal proceedings. The proceedings wouldn’t have amounted to that”--and the colonel snapped his fingers--“for those fellows hadn’t a leg to stand on; but do you know what they could have done? Why, they’d have tied up the mine for a year or two and prevented the sale to the syndicate. In order to get around that I hired Levitt to make out that fake report, and leave it where those soreheads could see it. Now my hands are free. The sale can be made to the syndicate, and we’ll all win a fortune--providing your misguided friend doesn’t take that cock-and-bull story of his to the meeting to-night.“

“Couldn’t you explain the matter to the syndicate, colonel, just as you have to me?” asked the cowboy.

“I could, yes; but they’d shy off. A little thing like that sometimes knocks a big deal galley-west. It’s best not to let any intimation of that fake report reach the ears of the syndicate until we have the syndicate’s money safely in our clothes. Young King means well--I’ll give him credit for that--but he’s shy a couple of chips this hand, and if he butts in we’re going to be left out in the cold. That’s all there is to it.”

“Why didn’t you explain this to Matt?”

“The explanation is for our own stockholders, and not for outsiders. A word, a whisper might leak through and reach the fellows who could block the deal. We mustn’t allow that. My boy, my boy”--and here the colonel became very gentle, very fatherly--“I’m doing the best I can for you. I’m trying to hand you a fortune, and you’ve got to help me--in spite of Pard Matt. It’s your duty to help me. You’ll never have such a chance to pick out a brownstone front on Easy Street, and you mustn’t let the opportunity slip through your fingers.”

To say that Joe McGlory was not influenced by the colonel’s words would be to say that he was not human. The cowboy wanted money, not for its own sake, but for the great things he felt he could do with it. Not the least of the cowboy’s desires was to help Matt in some of his far-reaching aims in the motor field. He accepted Billings’ story, and he reached out and gripped his hand heartily.

“I’m with you, chaps, taps, and latigoes!” he exclaimed. “But say, can’t I tell Pard Matt? If he knew----”

But the colonel was afraid of “Pard Matt.” The king of the motor boys had a brain altogether too keen.

“Not a word, not a syllable,” adjured Billings. “All that I have said, Joe, you must keep under your hat--until after the meeting to-night and until after the ‘Dream’ is sold. You must buckle in and help me and let Matt think what he will. Afterward, when the money is divided, you can show Pard Matt where he was wrong, and he’ll be glad to think that he did not interfere with us in our work.”

“But he’s going to interfere,” murmured McGlory. “Whenever Matt King sets out to do a thing he does it. That’s his style. He’s got the fake report, and he’ll use it at the meeting to-night--thinking he’s doing me a good turn.”

“I believe that Levitt will catch him,” asserted the colonel.

“You don’t know my pard as well as I do,” returned the cowboy dejectedly. “I wonder if I couldn’t----” McGlory paused.

“Couldn’t what?” urged the colonel.

“Never mind now. I’m going out and see if I can’t do something.”

Billings stared steadily at the lad for a moment.

“All right,” said he, “go and do what you can. Remember I have confidence in you, and you’re not to breathe a word regarding what we have talked about. I shall have to get to New York before three o’clock. The bank closes then, and I’ve got to get that bullion. I’ll have to start in a fast car by one. Come back and report to me before I leave.”

“I’ll do it,” replied the cowboy, hurrying out of the room.

The colonel chuckled, threw himself back in a chair, and lighted a cigar.

“Easy, easy, easy!” he muttered. “I can wrap McGlory around my fingers and not half try. Now, if King is captured, and if I can be sure he won’t meddle with me to-night, everything will be serene.”

The resourceful colonel accepted his worries calmly. He had too much dignity to take part in a foot race, so he remained in a comfortable chair by the window and waited for news.

McGlory was back in ten minutes. His face was glowing.

“Matt King dodged Levitt and all the rest who were trailing him,” he reported.

“What!” The colonel arose excitedly from his seat.

“Don’t fret, colonel,” grinned the cowboy, “it’s not so bad as that. An old darky who works around the club grounds helped Matt make his getaway. Matt asked him to tell me to meet him in the woods at the roadside, a quarter of a mile north. That’s where I’m going now. You’ll hear from me before one o’clock, colonel.”

“What are you going to do?” rapped out the colonel.

“Something that will make the deal a sure go. I haven’t time to talk much. _Adios_, for now.”

McGlory was away again like a shot, leaving the colonel wondering--and fretting a little.

A few minutes later Levitt came gloomily into the room.

“That young cub gave us the slip,” said he savagely, “and I never had such a run in my life. The fat’s in the fire, Billings.”

“Not so, my friend,” returned the colonel, his quick wit grasping something that looked like an opportunity. “Can you get hold of a man who will help you? Are you acquainted with any one about the club grounds who can be trusted to do a little brisk work and then keep quiet about it?”

“Well, yes. The man in the garage is known to me, and he’s out for anything that’s got a dollar in it. But what of it?”

The colonel’s plan was based on the information just communicated to him by McGlory. He went into the matter swiftly, but exhaustively, and when he had done the gloom had vanished from Levitt’s face.

“It will work, it will work,” murmured the mining engineer, rubbing his hands.

“Then go and work it,” said the colonel briskly.