Part 15

“So much the better. Lawyers ought to keep their brains cool. Seeing that you’ve got the brains and propose to keep ’em cool, I’ve got to keep up my nerve--and so I’ll take a drink.” He sucked at the flask again. “Where do you live?”

“In the East.”

“Then you don’t know this country and the laws out in this section,” said the stranger, showing his disappointment.

“Oh yes, I do; I used to live out here. That’s why I happen to be here now. I’m investigating investments for Eastern capital.”

My new acquaintance leaned dose, so close that his whisky-saturated breath left vapor on my cheeks.

“I have found out something that’s big. I thought I could handle it myself. I have started out to handle it myself. But when I saw you I said to myself, ‘There’s a squire, and he knows law and probably his brains are cooler than mine.’ I’ve got the secret and I’ve got the grit, but I need law, too--and I ain’t sure of all the fine points. I want you to come along with me and stand at my back and hand me the fine points as I need ’em. What do you charge per day for peddling law?”

“I’ll have to know what the deal is first.”

“Can’t tell you.”

I was getting a little shaky on the proposition and raised the paper in front of my face and appeared to lose interest in matters of law. After a time the red-faced individual tapped on the paper with his knuckle, as one would tap on a door. I pulled my shield to one side.

“A chap hates to let go of a big thing to a stranger, even if that stranger is a lawyer. I have walked past a dozen law-offices without daring to go in. Perhaps you don’t realize what a big thing I’ve got. Now listen here! Suppose you were a fellow like I am--a prospector--and was digging around the record-books, looking up land titles, mineral grants, and so forth, and got on to a trail that you followed up and found that a new city had been laid out and lots sold off and buildings going up, and all that--all on a location that wasn’t legal? Mind you, I ain’t naming any place. But it’s on a section that land-grabbers got hold of a long time ago. And they were such hungry land-grabbers that they stretched lines to take in everything that was loose around those parts. There was no one to make any holler about it. It was just so much extra land and it didn’t look like real money.”

“I have so much business of my own that I’m not interested in making guesses at the business of somebody else,” I remarked. I was in that thing about as deep as I wanted to be.

“But how do I know anything about you?”

“Honors are even!”

The stranger knuckled his forehead, trying to think.

“I don’t want to trig the best thing I ever got hold of in my life because I didn’t buy a little law for to grease the runway,” he said at last. “I may as well tell you--without giving out names and places--that those land-grabbers hooked in a section that belonged to a soldiers’ grant--and that’s why no one ever made a holler. There don’t seem to be any particular heirs to side-tracked soldiers’ grants that have never been thought worth much. No timber, you see; only plain land. But plain land is mighty good property when a railroad takes a notion to build on to it and comes to an end there and a city starts.” The client began to show excitement. “They have laid out lots and built and they haven’t got straight title. I have found it out.”

“That doesn’t seem reasonable,” I said. “Railroads and men who are building cities do not make such mistakes.”

“But they have this time. The same money that grabbed the land has built the railroad. They think they have got it all buttoned up. They didn’t want to expose themselves by starting a movement to make their title straight. They reckon they’ll be able to bluff it out with money and pull and influence down to Boise. That will be easier than to chase around and establish title to a soldiers’ grant. But, by thunder! they can’t stretch or shrink the hide of old earth! There are set points that have got to be measured from and the measurements will tell the story. And re-locations will have to stand--for the law of the United States can’t be built over when the holler is made.”

I guess I didn’t show much interest--I was afraid to show any. I hoped the man would shut up and go away.

“Don’t you believe what I am telling you?” he demanded.

“I am merely wondering how it comes about that you know so much, more than everybody else about a section of land that has been surveyed for a railroad and a new city.”

“My father was a pioneer in this country. One day, after they began to build the railroad, I was in the record-office and happened to remember some of the things he told me about the days when they were grabbing land in these parts. I looked up records, I did measuring, I did some reckoning, and within the last two days I have made sure that I’ve got the bind on the city of Breed.”

In his excitement he spat out the name. Then he promptly began to damn himself. “I never ought to take a drink of liquor,” he declared. “But when it came to me that I could run in there and re-locate the best hunk of that land, I reckoned I needed to have my nerve with me, and so I’ve been bracing my nerve. But the trouble with me is, when my nerve is braced my tongue is loose. Now I suppose I’ve got to take you in! But I’m dangerous. However, I’ll take you in.”

I didn’t say anything.

“What do you get a day for your best law work?”

“I don’t work by the day.” I wondered just how lawyers did work.

“Well, then, name your price for standing by me against the sharks they’ll bring to try to beat me out. I don’t know anything about hiring lawyers.”

“I’ll take half.” I thought that remark would send him hipering away.

My client’s face promptly showed the color of a ripe damson. He tried to say something and merely clucked. After a struggle he managed to control his temper and his voice. He leaned forward and clutched my knees. He spoke low, for there were other passengers near, but the rasp in his tones made up for any lack of emphasis.

“My name is Peter Dragg. If you have never heard of me, ask somebody about me. Ask any one between Buffalo Hump and Cour d’Alene. I’ve had a lot of practice in doing things to men who have got in my way. What I’ll do to you if you don’t back up will put red rings around the moon.”

“Well, then, consider I’m discharged!”

“From what?”

“From my position as your lawyer.”

“I haven’t hired you.”

“Then suppose you cast off those grappling-hooks,” I suggested, for his clutch on my knees hurt my flesh and my feelings. When he did not let go, I reached down slowly, grabbed his hands and began to pry.

Not a man about us noticed what was going on--the newspaper that I had dropped covered our hands. It was tense and silent testing out which was the better man in that clinch. He had a handsome little grip of his own, I’ll admit, but I had diver’s hooks at the ends of my arms and I bested him.

“I quit!” he growled, after a time. “Leave go!”

“Listen,” said I. “I’m not a lawyer.”

“You lie!”

“I _did_ lie, but not now. You pass on about your business.”

“It isn’t my own business any longer--I have put you wise to it.”

“But I’m forgetting it. I have plenty else on my mind.”

“You don’t get past with that kind of bluff,” he sneered. “You intend to beat me to it, but you can’t.”

“Look here, I’m coming across square with you,” I protested. “You came and jammed a lot of information on to me. I didn’t ask for it.”

“I say you coaxed it out of me. Now you’ve got to come in and give me law on a decent lay. If you don’t I’ll do you!”

“I’m not a _lawyer_.”

“I know better! You’re tied up with me--you’ve got to stick to me.”

“But I have important matters which will take all my time.”

“I’ll take your time from now on.”

“Look here! I propose to go on and mind my own business!”

“Then you’re spoken for! I’ll tend to you before you get a chance to butt in on _my_ business.”

He leaned back in his seat and pushed his coat aside, inviting my attention by a downward glance.

He was packing a gun on each hip’.

“I’ll give you about ten minutes’ recess to think the thing over,” he stated. “If you try to leave this train I’ll be after you!”

He went down the car, turned over a scat, and faced me.

I was in a fine way to attend to the business of Judge Kingsley and myself! Whether I went into that fellow’s scheme or did not go in, it seemed all the same. In those days, according to what I had read, they were very careless about handling firearms in some parts of the West, and it looked to me as if I had dropped into one of those sections. He took another pull from his flask. The uncertainty of what that intoxicated gentleman might feel impelled to do to me next, in the confusion of his fuddlement, made the shivers run up and down my back. In the ten anxious minutes that passed he pulled that flask four times, and every time he reached for it I made a motion to dodge under the seat. The damnable part of it was that nobody in the car was paying the least attention to us.

Then he came tottering up the aisle and lurched into the seat in front of me. Between two hiccups he sandwiched a threatening, “Well?” Plainly, he was well “pickled” and accordingly dangerous. And, on the other hand, there was a hope for me in his condition. I concluded I might as well be shot as scared to death. I couldn’t draw a deep breath as long as those guns were on him.

“Well, what say?” he repeated.

“It’s all right!” I mumbled. “But let’s make it private. Listen! I’ll whisper!” I leaned forward, sliding both hands along his legs, getting close to his ear. I laid hands on both weapons and jerked myself back, holding them low at my hips.

“Make one move and I’ll bore you,” I growled. “Go back to your seat. Go quick!”

He went. I tucked the guns into my own pockets.

We passed the station to which I had paid fares, and I handed more money to the conductor. I decided to stay on the train, hoping that my client would arrive at his home town, whatever it was, and get off. But he kept right on.

After a time he held up a handkerchief by one corner and waggled it, giving me a drunken and moist wink. Evidently he wanted further conference under a flag of truce, and I nodded agreement after I had made sure that the guns could be come at easily. I agreed because I hoped I could make some sensible arrangement to get rid of this particular bottle imp who had landed himself on to my affairs.

“You think you’re a slick one, eh?” My hopes fell, for his tone did not suggest compromise. “You’d better turn around and go back. You’re heading into the wrong country. Will you go back?”

“What is the country?”

“Thought you said you used to live out this way!”

“I say, what is the country you’re speaking of?”

“The Potlatch section,” he growled. “You’d better not get as far as that. You know Shan Benson, don’t you?”

“Maybe!”

“You know Ive Hacker, Binn Mingo, Cole Wass--all friends of mine!”

“What about it?”

“Pals, I say! All work together. Pull off our plays together.”

“Go ahead!”

“Go ahead!” he repeated, grinding his teeth. “We’ll go ahead and make a pot roast of you in that plug-hat! Do you think I’m a lone-hander, without friends? Haven’t you ever heard of Steer Bingham?”

My heart jumped. That was the of the names Jeff Dawlin had written down for me.

“And I suppose you’re holding out Ike Dawlin for a--” I started, giving him a sharp look.

He smacked his hand on his knee. “Yes, Ike Dawlin. That’s the kind of friends I’ve got who will--”

“A fine bunch to be afraid of if they all are as handy by as Ike Dawlin!”

He stared at me.

“Ike Dawlin is East on a gold-brick game, and you know it,” I said.

“East--East--you plug-hat stiff! I’ll show you whether he’s East or not!”

“He is East along with ‘Peacock’ Pratt.”

My cocksureness made him furious.

“By the jumped-up jeesicks, don’t you suppose I know when Ike Dawlin lands back in the Potlatch country?”

“I’ll have to see him to believe it. Yes, or ‘Peacock’ Pratt!”

“You follow along on my heels and you’ll see both of ’em all right! Next you’ll claim to be a friend of theirs, eh?”

“Oh no! If I really thought Ike Dawlin was in the Potlatch instead of back East I wouldn’t be headed this way. _There’s_ one special man I wouldn’t want to meet up with.”

Mr. Dragg bounced up and down on the seat in his rage. I had prodded him as hard as I could in order to make sure that he knew what he was talking about.

“Damn you!” he snorted. “Then you’ll get your dose of Ike Dawlin. I won’t eat nor sleep till I find him. And he’ll burn up the road getting to you. Ike Dawlin, eh? You don’t dare to come on!”

“Keep your eye on me. But if you can dig up Ike Dawlin in these parts come around and I’ll hand you a present--maybe I’ll hand back your guns!”

Mr. Dragg by that time was not a pleasant companion and I got up and went back through the train. He started after me, and then thought better of it. Probably he reflected that he had me either way. If I got frightened and went back he would be well rid of me as a rival in his scheme; if I came on he had Dawlin and the rest--and I surely believed his word about Dawlin’s whereabouts. I did not know whether I was mighty glad that my chase was being guided in such handsome manner or was so dreadfully scared by the prospects just ahead of me that I was half minded to jump off the train; my feelings were very much mixed up.

However, when I met the gloomy stare of Zebulon Kingsley I grinned--I couldn’t help it. There was a lot of grim humor in the situation.

“Been raking in more dirty money, I suppose,” he snarled, mistaking the nature of my smile.

“No, I have turned a better trick, sir. I have just met up with the most obliging chap I have found in a long time. He knows the man who fooled you into buying that gold brick. He is going to find him for us!”

“Bah!” sneered the judge. “This is only a wild, crazy, helter-skelter chase for--”

“I’m telling you the truth, sir! I never saw a man so enthusiastic about a kindness for strangers! He just told me that he wouldn’t eat or sleep till he had found that fellow. Why, he is so headlong about the thing that I’m afraid he’ll find the chap before we’re ready to meet him in proper style!”

“Hump!” sneered the judge, not taking a mite of stock in me.

I walked away and sat down by myself. There was sad truth in what I just told Kingsley. I was not ready to meet Ike Dawlin and “Peacock” Pratt.

XVIII--THE ECCENTRICITIES OF ROYAL CITY

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.”