Part 17

"Yes; he has been holding that in reserve--that, and one other thing."

"What was the other thing?"

"Me," said Smith, cheerfully disregardful of his English. "You haven't forgotten his instructions to the man Lanterby, that night out at the road-house on the Topaz pike?--the talk that you overheard?"

"No; I haven't forgotten."

"His idea, then, was to have me killed off in a scrap of some sort--as a last resort, of course; but later on he found a safer expedient, and he has been trying his level best to work it ever since."

Starbuck was absently fishing for a second cube of sugar in the sugar-bowl. "Has it got anything to do with the bunch of news that you won't tell us--about yourself, John?"

"It has. Two days ago, Stanton had his finger fairly on the trigger, but a friend of mine stepped in and snapped the safety-catch. Last night, again, he stood to win out; to have the pry-hold he has been searching for handed to him on a silver platter, so to speak. But a man fell into the river, and Stanton lost out once more."

Starbuck glanced up soberly. "You're talking in riddles now, John. I don't _sabe_."

"It isn't necessary for you to _sabe_. Results are what count. Barring accidents, you Timanyoni High Line people can reasonably count on having me with you for the next few critical days; and, I may add, you never needed me more pointedly."

Starbuck's smile was face-wide.

"I hope I don't feel sorry," he remarked. "Some day, when you can take an hour or so off, I'm going to get you to show me around in your little mu-zeeum of self-conceit, John. Maybe I can learn how to gather me up one."

Smith matched the mine owner's good-natured smile. For some unexplainable reason the world, his particular world, seemed to have lost its malignance. He could even think of Stanton without bitterness; and the weapon which had been weighting his hip pocket for the past few days had been carefully buried in the bottom of the lower dressing-case drawer before he came down to breakfast.

"You may laugh, Billy, but you'll have to admit that I've been outfiguring the whole bunch of you, right from the start," he retorted brazenly. "It's my scheme, and I'm going to put it through with a whoop. You'll see--before to-morrow night."

"I reckon, when you do put it through, you can ask your own fee," said Starbuck quietly.

"I'm going to; and the size of it will astonish you, Billy. I shall turn over the little block of stock you folks have been good enough to let me carry, give you and the colonel and the board of directors a small dinner in the club-room up-stairs and--vanish. But let's get down to business. This is practically Stanton's last day of grace. If he can't get some legal hold upon us before midnight to-morrow night, or work some scheme to make us lose our franchise, his job is gone."

"Show me," said the mine owner succinctly.

"It's easy. With the dam completed and the water running in the ditches, we become at once a going concern, with assets a long way in advance of our liabilities. The day after to-morrow--if we pull through--you won't be able to buy a single share of Timanyoni High Line at any figure. As a natural consequence, public sentiment, which, we may say, is at present a little doubtful, will come over to our side in a land-slide, and Stanton's outfit, if it wants to continue the fight, will have to fight the entire Timanyoni, with the city of Brewster thrown in for good measure. Am I making it plain?"

"Right you are, so far. Go on."

"On the other hand, if Stanton can block us before to-morrow night; hang us up in some way and make us lose our rights under the charter; we're gone--snuffed out like a candle. Listen, Billy, and I'll tell you something that I haven't dared to tell anybody, not even Colonel Baldwin. I've been spending the company's money like water to keep in touch. The minute we fail, and long before we could hope to reorganize a second time and apply for a new charter, Stanton's company will be in the field, with its charter already granted. From that to taking possession of our dam, either by means of an enabling act of the Legislature, or by purchase from the paper railroad, will be only a step. And we couldn't do a thing! We'd have no legal rights, and no money to fight with!"

Starbuck pushed his chair away from the table and drew a long breath.

"Good Lord!" he sighed; "I wish to goodness it was day after to-morrow! Can you carry it any further, John?"

"Yes; a step or two. For a week Stanton has been busy on the paper-railroad claim, and that is what made me buy a few cases of Winchesters and send them out to Williams: I was afraid Stanton might try force. He won't do that if he can help it; he'll go in with some legal show, if possible, because our force at the dam far outnumbers any gang he could hire, and he knows we are armed."

"He can't work the legal game," said Starbuck definitively. "I've known Judge Warner ever since I was knee-high to a hop-toad, and a squarer man doesn't breathe."

"That is all right, but you're forgetting something. The paper railroad is--or was once--an interstate corporation, and so may ask for relief from the federal courts, thus going over Judge Warner's head. I'm not saying anything against Lorching, the federal judge at Red Butte. I've met him, and he is a good jurist and presumably an honest man. But he is well along in years, and has an exaggerated notion of his own importance. Stanton, or rather his figurehead railroad people, have asked him to intervene, and he has taken the case under advisement. That is where we stand this morning."

Starbuck was nodding slowly. "I see what you mean, now," he said. "If Lorching jumps the wrong way for us, you're looking to see a United States marshal walk up to Bartley Williams some time to-day and tell him to quit. That would put the final kibosh on us, wouldn't it?"

Smith was rising in his place.

"_I'm_ not dead yet, Billy," he rejoined cheerfully. "I haven't let it get this far without hammering out a few expedients for our side. If I can manage to stay in the fight to-day and to-morrow----"

A little new underclerk had come in from the hotel office and was trying to give Starbuck a note in a square envelope, and Starbuck was saying: "No; that's Mr. Smith, over there."

Smith took the note and opened it, and he scarcely heard the clerk's explanation that it had been put in his box the evening before, and that the day clerk had been afraid he would get away without finding it. It was from Verda Richlander, and it had neither superscription nor signature. This is what Smith read:

"My little ruse has failed miserably. Mr. K's. messenger found my father in spite of it, and he--the messenger--returned this evening: I know, because he brought a note from father to me. Come to me as early to-morrow morning as you can, and we'll plan what can be done."

Smith crushed the note in his hand and thrust it into his pocket. Starbuck was making a cigarette, and was studiously refraining from breaking in. But Smith did not keep him waiting.

"That was my knock-out, Billy," he said with a quietness that was almost overdone. "My time has suddenly been shortened to hours--perhaps to minutes. Get a car as quickly as you can and go to Judge Warner's house. I have an appointment with him at nine o'clock. Tell him I'll keep it, if I can, but that he needn't wait for me if I am not there on the minute."

XXVI

The Colonel's "Defi"

Though it was only eight o'clock, Smith sent his card to Miss Richlander's rooms at once and then had himself lifted to the mezzanine floor to wait for her. She came in a few minutes, a strikingly beautiful figure of a woman in the freshness of her morning gown, red-lipped, bright-eyed, and serenely conscious of her own resplendent gifts of face and figure. Smith went quickly to meet her and drew her aside into the music parlor. Already the need for caution was beginning to make itself felt.

"I have come," he said briefly.

"You got my note?" she asked.

"A few minutes ago--just as I was leaving the breakfast-table."

"You will leave Brewster at once--while the way is still open?"

He shook his head, "I can't do that; in common justice to the men who have trusted me, and who are now needing me more than ever, I must stay through this one day, and possibly another."

"Mr. Kinzie will not be likely to lose any time," she prefigured thoughtfully. "He has probably telegraphed to Lawrenceville before this." Then, with a glance over her shoulder to make sure that there were no eavesdroppers: "Of course, you know that Mr. Stanton is at the bottom of all this prying and spying?"

"It is Stanton's business to put me out of the game, if he can. I've told you enough of the situation here so that you can understand why it is necessary for him to efface me. His time has grown very short now."

Again the statuesque beauty glanced over her shoulder.

"Lawrenceville is a long way off, and Sheriff Macauley is enough of a politician--in an election year--to want to be reasonably certain before he incurs the expense of sending a deputy all the way out here, don't you think?" she inquired.

"Certainty? There isn't the slightest element of uncertainty in it. There are hundreds of people in Brewster who can identify me."

"But not one of these Brewsterites can identify you as John Montague Smith, of Lawrenceville--the man who is wanted by Sheriff Macauley," she put in quickly. Then she added: "My father foresaw that difficulty. As I told you in my note, he sent me a letter by Mr. Kinzie's messenger. After telling me that he will be detained in the mountains several days longer, he refers to Mr. Kinzie's request and suggests----"

The fugitive was smiling grimly. "He suggests that you might help Mr. Kinzie out by telling him whether or not he has got hold of the right John Smith?"

"Not quite that," she rejoined. "He merely suggests that I may be asked to identify you; in which case I am to be prudent, and--to quote him exactly--'not get mixed up in the affair in any way so that it would make talk.'"

"I see," said Smith. And then: "You have a disagreeable duty ahead of you, and I'd relieve you of the necessity by running away, if I could. But that is impossible, as I have explained."

She was silent for a moment; then she said: "When I told you a few days ago that you were going to need my help, Montague, I didn't foresee anything like this. Have you any means of finding out whether or not Mr. Kinzie has sent his wire to Lawrenceville?"

"Yes, I think I can do that much."

"Suppose you do it and then let me know. I shall breakfast with the Stantons in a few minutes; and after nine o'clock ... if you could contrive to keep out of the way until I can get word to you; just so they won't be able to bring us face to face with each other----"

Smith saw what she meant; saw, also, whereunto his wretched fate was dragging him. It was the newest of all the reincarnations, the one which had begun with Jibbey's silent hand-clasp the night before, which prompted him to say:

"If they should ask you about me, you must tell them the truth, Verda."

Her smile was mildly scornful.

"Is that what the plain-faced little ranch person would do?" she asked.

"I don't know; yes, I guess it is."

"Doesn't she care any more for you than that?"

Smith did not reply. He was standing where he could watch the comings and goings of the elevators. Time was precious and he was chafing at the delay, but Miss Richlander was not yet ready to let him go.

"Tell me honestly, Montague," she said; "is it anything more than a case of propinquity with this Baldwin girl?--on your part, I mean."

"It isn't anything," he returned soberly. "Corona Baldwin will never marry any man who has so much to explain as I have."

"You didn't know this was her home, when you came out here?"

"No."

"But you had met her somewhere, before you came?"

"Once; yes. It was in Guthrieville, over a year ago. I had driven over to call on some people that I knew, and I met her there at a house where she was visiting."

"Does she remember that she had met you?"

"No, not yet." He was certain enough of this to answer without reservations.

"But you remembered her?"

"Not at first."

"I see," she nodded, and then, without warning: "What was the matter with you last night--about dinner-time?"

"Why should you think there was anything the matter with me?"

"I was out driving with the Stantons. When I came back to the hotel I found Colonel Baldwin and another man--a lawyer, I think he was--waiting for me. They said you were needing a friend who could go and talk to you and--'calm you down,' was the phrase the lawyer used. I was good-natured enough to go with them, but when we reached your offices you had gone, and the ranch girl was there alone, waiting for her father."

"That was nonsense!" he commented; "their going after you as if I were a maniac or a drunken man, I mean."

This time Miss Richlander's smile was distinctly resentful. "I suppose the colonel's daughter answered the purpose better," she said. "There was an awkward little _contretemps_, and Miss Baldwin refused, rather rudely, I thought, to tell her father where you had gone."

Smith broke away from the unwelcome subject abruptly, saying: "There is something else you ought to know. Jibbey is here, at last."

"Here in the hotel?"

"Yes."

"Does he know you are here?"

"He does."

"Why didn't you tell me before? That will complicate things dreadfully. Tucker will talk and tell all he knows; he can't help it."

"This is one time when he will not talk. Perhaps he will tell you why when you see him."

Miss Richlander glanced at the face of the small watch pinned on her shoulder.

"You must not stay here any longer," she protested. "The Stantons may come down any minute, now, and they mustn't find us together. I am still forgiving enough to want to help you, but you must do your part and let me know what is going on."

Smith promised and took his dismissal with a mingled sense of relief and fresh embarrassment. In the new development which was threatening to drag him back once more into the primitive savageries, he would have been entirely willing to eliminate Verda Richlander as a factor, helpful or otherwise. But there was good reason to fear that she might refuse to be eliminated.

William Starbuck's new car was standing in front of Judge Warner's house in the southern suburb when Smith descended from the closed cab which he had taken at the Hophra House side entrance. The clock in the court-house tower was striking the quarter of nine. The elevated mesa upon which the suburb was built commanded a broad view of the town and the outlying ranch lands, and in the distance beyond the river the Hillcrest cottonwoods outlined themselves against a background of miniature buttes.

Smith's gaze took in the wide, sunlit prospect. He had paid and dismissed his cabman, and the thought came to him that in a few hours the wooded buttes, the bare plains, the mighty mountains, and the pictured city spreading map-like at his feet would probably exist for him only as a memory. While he halted on the terrace, Starbuck came out of the house.

"The judge is at breakfast," the mine owner announced. "You're to go in and wait. What do you want me to do next?"

Smith glanced down regretfully at the shining varnish and resplendent metal of the new automobile. "If your car wasn't so new," he began; but Starbuck cut him off.

"Call the car a thousand years old and go on."

"All right. When I get through with the judge I shall want to go out to the dam. Will you wait and take me?"

"Surest thing on earth,"--with prompt acquiescence. And then: "Is it as bad as you thought it was going to be, John?"

"It's about as bad as it can be," was the sober reply, and with that Smith went in to wait for his interview with the Timanyoni's best-beloved jurist.

As we have seen, this was at nine o'clock, or a few minutes before the hour, and as Starbuck descended the stone steps to take his seat in the car, David Kinzie, at his desk in the Brewster City National, was asking the telephone "central" to give him the Timanyoni High Line offices. Martin, the bookkeeper, answered, and he took a message from the bank president that presently brought Colonel Dexter Baldwin to the private room in the bank known to nervous debtors as "the sweat-box".

"Sit down, Dexter," said the banker shortly; "sit down a minute while I look at my mail."

It was one of David Kinzie's small subtleties to make a man sit idly thus, on one pretext or another; it rarely failed to put the incomer at a disadvantage, and on the present occasion it worked like a charm. Baldwin had let his cigar go out and had chewed the end of it into a pulp before Kinzie swung around in his chair and launched out abruptly.

"You and I have always been pretty good friends, Dexter," he began, "and I have called you down here this morning to prove to you that I am still your friend. Where is your man Smith?"

Baldwin shook his head. "I don't know," he answered. "I haven't seen him since last evening."

"Are you sure he is still in town?"

"I haven't any reason to think that he isn't."

"Hasn't run away, then?"

The Missouri colonel squared himself doggedly in the suppliant debtor's chair, which was the one Kinzie had placed for him. "What are you driving at, Dave?" he demanded.

"We'll tackle your end of it, first," said the banker curtly. "Do you know that you and your crowd have come to the bottom of the bag on that dam proposition?"

"No, I don't."

"Well, you have. You've got just this one more day to live."

The Missourian fell back upon his native phrase.

"I reckon you'll have to show me, Dave."

"I will. Have you seen the weather report this morning?"

"No."

"I thought not. I've had a trained observer up in the eastern hills for the past week. The river rose four feet last night, and there are predictions out for more cloudbursts and thunderstorms in the headwater region. The snow is melting fast in the higher gulches, and you know as well as I do that there is at least a strong probability that your dam won't hold the flood rise."

"I don't know it," asserted Baldwin stoutly. "But go on. You've got your gun loaded: what are you aiming it at?"

"Just this: there is a chance that you'll lose the dam by natural causes before the concrete hardens; but if you don't, you're sure to lose it the other way. I told you weeks ago that the other people were carrying too many big guns for you. I don't want to see you killed off, Dexter."

"I'm no quitter; you ought to know that, Dave," was the blunt rejoinder.

"I know; but there are times when it is simply foolhardy to hold on. The compromise proposition that I put up to you people a while back still holds good. But to-day is the last day, Dexter. You must accept it now, if you are going to accept it at all."

"And if we still refuse?"

"You'll go smash, the whole kit of you. As I've said, this is the last call."

By this time Baldwin's cigar was a hopeless wreck.

"You've got something up your sleeve, Dave: what is it?" he inquired.

The banker pursed his lips and the bristling mustache assumed its most aggressive angle.

"There are a number of things, but the one which concerns you most, just now, is this: we've got Smith's record, at last. He is an outlaw, with a price on his head. We've dug out the whole story. He is a defaulting bank cashier, and before he ran away he tried to kill his president."

Baldwin was frowning heavily. "Who told you all this? Was it this Miss Richlander over at the Hophra House?"

"No; it was her father. I sent one of my young men out to the Topaz to look him up."

"And you have telegraphed to the chief of police, or the sheriff, or whoever it is that wants Smith?"

"Not yet. I wanted to give you one more chance, Dexter. Business comes first. The Brewster City National is a bank, not a detective agency. You go and find Smith and fire him; tell him he is down and out; get rid of him, once for all. Then come back here and we'll fix up that compromise with Stanton."

Baldwin found a match and tried to relight the dead cigar. But it was chewed past redemption.

"Let's get it plumb straight, Dave," he pleaded, in the quiet tone of one who will leave no peace-keeping stone unturned. "You say you've got John dead to rights. Smith is a mighty common name. I shouldn't wonder if there were half a million 'r so John Smiths--taking the country over. How do you know you've got the right one?"

"His middle name is 'Montague'," snapped the banker, "and the man who is wanted called himself 'J. Montague Smith'. But we can identify him positively. There is one person in Brewster who knew Smith before he came here; namely, Mr. Richlander's daughter. She can tell us if he is the right Smith, and she probably will if the police ask her to."

Baldwin may have had his own opinion about that, but if so, he kept it to himself and spoke feelingly of other things.

"Dave," he said, rising to stand over the square-built man in the swing-chair, "we've bumped the bumps over a good many miles of rough road together since we first hit the Timanyoni years ago, and it's like pulling a sound tooth to have to tell you the plain truth. You've got a mighty bad case of money-rot. The profit account has grown so big with you that you can't see out over the top of it. You've horsed back and forth between Stanton's outfit and ours until you can't tell the difference between your old friends and a bunch of low-down, conscienceless land-pirates. You pull your gun and go to shooting whenever you get ready. We'll stay with you and try to hold up our end--and John's. And you mark my words, Dave; you're the man that's going to get left in this deal; the straddler always gets left." And with that he cut the interview short and went back to the High Line offices on the upper floor.

XXVII

Two Witnesses

Driven by Starbuck in the brand-new car, Smith reached the dam at half-past ten and was in time to see the swarming carpenters begin the placing of the forms for the pouring of the final section of the great wall. Though the high water was lapping at the foot timbers of the forming, and the weather reports were still portentous, Williams was in fine fettle. There had been no further interferences on the part of the railroad people, every man on the job was spurting for the finish, and the successful end was now fairly in sight.

"We'll be pouring this afternoon," he told Smith, "and with a twenty-four-hour set for the concrete, and the forms left in place for additional security, we can shut the spillway gates and back the water into the main ditch. Instead of being a hindrance then, the flood-tide will help. Under slack-water conditions it would take a day or two to finish filling the reservoir lake, but now we'll get the few feet of rise needed to fill the sluices almost while you wait."

"You have your guards out, as we planned?" Smith inquired.

"Twenty of the best men I could find. They are patrolling on both sides of the river, with instructions to report if they see so much as a rabbit jump up."

"Good. I'm going to let Starbuck drive me around the lake limits to see to it personally that your pickets are on the job. But first, I'd like to use your 'phone for a minute or two," and with that Smith shut himself up in the small field-office and called Martin, the bookkeeper, at the town headquarters.

The result of the brief talk with Martin seemed satisfactory, for when it was concluded, Smith rang off and asked for the Hophra House. Being given the hotel exchange, he called the number of Miss Richlander's suite, and the answer came promptly in the full, throaty voice of the Olympian beauty.

"Is that you, Montague?"

"Yes. I'm out at the dam. Nothing has been done yet. No telegraphing, I mean. You understand?"