Part 16

The judge was all of a tremble while we stood there at the edge of the shadow and watched the room and the drinkers. At last, with a flourish of his hand, Pratt gave orders to the bartender to fill all glasses. We heard his hoarse voice above all others. He tossed a bill on the bar and he and Dragg left in company and climbed the stairs leading up from the hotel office.

“Judge Kingsley,” I said, “I left the other place and came over here hoping I could sneak close enough to a certain chap to overhear what he proposes to do about a little matter that I suggested to him a few hours ago. I see that he has found somebody to talk to. We’ve got a handy sort of house for eavesdropping, but I want you to remember that the other fellow can hear us, too. Come along with me and keep your head. A lot depends!” The “Pallace” was evidently more of a free and easy tavern than the “Imperial.” There was no register on the planks which served for an office desk. The proprietor looked up at us and leisurely lighted his pipe before answering my questions regarding accommodations.

“Four dollars apiece--two in a room. Pay now. Includes breakfast, and there’s a cold, stand-up supper out in the dining-room.”

“We bought box lunches from the brakeman on the train; we don’t want supper,” I explained.

“Price just the same. Supper is there, and I ain’t to blame if you don’t want to eat it,” stated the proprietor. “You needn’t look for any place to write your names,” he added, noting that my eyes seemed to be searching for something that should be on the desk. “We don’t keep books. And half the men who come along here can’t write, anyway.”

I laid the money in his grimy hand and he fished two cards from his vest pocket and scrawled “Brakfust” on each with a lead-pencil.

“Give ’em up to the table-girl in the morning. Now, gents, all the rooms up-stairs are just alike and there ain’t no locks on the doors. Go up and help yourselves to any room that ain’t being used. I hope you don’t snore, either of you. It’s apt to start gun-play from them that’s trying to get to sleep in other rooms, and the walls we’ve got up-stairs don’t stop bullets. Sleep hearty!”

The judge followed me, muttering his opinions in regard to the hotel methods in Royal City.

“Hush!” I warned. “Tread lightly and keep still. It’s a stroke of luck that he lets us pick our own rooms.”

Smoky, stinking kerosene-lamps lighted dimly the corridor up-stairs. Unplaned planks formed the floor, and here again were the walls of tarred paper that had enabled Royal City to grow overnight. Some of the doors that gave upon the corridor were open, and the rooms were dark and apparently untenanted. Light shone from chinks in the walls here and there, in other places, showing that guests were in their rooms.

I tiptoed cautiously along the planks with ear out at each point where light sifted from crannies. Then I grasped the judge by the arm and thrust him into a room. I lighted the tiny lamp and motioned the old man to take a seat in the single chair. I sat on the edge of the bed.

When a drunken man is on a topic that sops up all his interest, he not only iterates, he reiterates. It is hard to pry a wabbly tongue loose from the favorite topic. Intoxication seems to make the subject fresher and more entrancing with each repetition. The fuddled mind gets into a run-around, as men lost in snow or fog keep on traveling and always return to the same place. I had no means of determining how many times Dragg had been over the subject with Mr. Pratt, but that latter gentleman kept snarling out protests that the narrator did not heed. It was a story about how a stranger in a plug-hat--a shark of a lawyer--had hypnotized him, Dragg, on the train and had sucked out of him all his plans, projects, and secrets in regard to the new city of Breed and now proposed to rob said Dragg of all profits and rake-offs, and if a man could do that and get away with it what would be the use in any honest man starting out in the world and turning a trick for himself, as Dragg had proposed to do? So on and on, he gabbled.

“Say, look here, ‘Dangerflag’”--and this seemed a good nickname for Dragg’s red face--“don’t con me any more as the human charlotte russe--the top part of me is hard! There ain’t any such thing as hypnotizing a man when he doesn’t want to be hypnotized. You were drunk and you slit open your little bundle of playthings for him to look at.”

“If I wasn’t hypnotized how did he get two guns off me--and I sitting there not able to move hand or foot or wink my eyes?”

“I’d be more inclined to think you begged him to take ’em as a guarantee of friendship, and offered to kiss him in the bargain,” sneered Mr. Pratt. “I’ve seen you drunk, Dragg.”

“But I wasn’t to the give-my-shirt drunk stage that time,” insisted the other. “I was hiring him for a lawyer--driving a sharp trade with him--and then he hypnotized me and cleaned me out. And he’s over there in the other hotel--and I’m going to get to him before he puts me out of business. I’ll tell you again--”

“For the love of Jehoshaphat _don’t_ tell me again!” protested Pratt. “I have got it by heart.”

“But you haven’t told me where Ike Dawlin is. He is the only man that shark is afraid of. He told me so. He reckons that Ike is in the East. That makes him bold to do me dirt. I made believe that I know where Ike is. I tried to scare him, but the bluff didn’t go. He is sure that Ike ain’t West. You’re Ike’s regular partner, and you know where he is. I need him. Send for him, and we’ll hold that plug-hatted skyootus here till Ike can whirl in and back him off. Blast him! I could have dropped him if this was ten years ago, even if he was from the East, and wore a plug-hat--and I could have got away with it--but the law sharks have been and tied us all up.”

“You want to think twice before you try gun-play on a man from the East who comes wearing a plug-hat,” advised Pratt. “It’s a pretty good sign that he is from the upper shelves back home, and somebody will be slammed hard if he gets hurt. Keep your hands off a plug-hatter, ‘Dangerflag.’ I don’t believe Ike would dip in, even if he were here. He’s too comfortable just now to play scarecrow for your private interests. He might, if I asked him to, of course. But I don’t see any reason for asking him.”

“I’ll give you a half share in the Breed job,” promised Dragg. “I’ve told you I would if you can gaff that law shark.”

“The Breed job looks like digging into a national bank vault with your thumb-nail,” remarked Mr. Pratt, listlessly. “A lot of law and complications! This re-locating business runs against snags always. I don’t mind telling you that Ike and I find the old game a lot easier when we want to clean up an easy make. I’ll be blamed if we could sell mining stock the last time we went East. What do you know about that? And then we nudged each other and turned around and speared three easy propositions on the good old gold-brick game. You wouldn’t believe they’d still fall--but they do it. It’s simply a case of go hunt in the odd corners for the right man. They’re there, waiting. We peeled five thousand off the back of an old town treasurer--as soft money as we ever pulled. A town treasurer, mind you! We didn’t have to go farther into the bush than that! You can’t expect us to be very enthusiastic about a claim-jumping proposition just now--with plenty in our Dockets. Gimme a match! When you go to fighting a boom city and a railroad crowd, you’ve got your work cut out for you--and just now I’m feeling a lot like loafing.”

Mr. Pratt was very wordy--but he was almighty interesting. Who was hugging the most money--he or Dawlin?

It was plain to me that the town treasurer of Levant was holding in with difficulty. He twisted on his chair and his face was gray with anger and his lips moved. I scowled a warning.

“Well, you can loaf on _my_ job all right if you’ll grab in,” snapped Dragg, temper in his voice. “I’m not asking you to break your neck. You have got the thing sized up all wrong. I don’t expect to own Breed. I’m going to operate on bluff. The Breed boomers and the railroad will come across rather than have the city set back by a hold-up of everything while land titles are being settled. If they’ll hand me cash, I’ll keep still, surrender my claim, and the new lines can be ran and locations filed before anybody wakes up. They’ll see the point all right.”

“And I reckon that the lawyer you hired on the train sees it all right, too,” commented Pratt.

“I don’t know what made me blow myself to him after I had dodged lawyers so long,” mourned Dragg. “But the way he was dressed made him look so mighty solid and reliable and honest--and his eyes were nice and brown! He got me! I tell you I was hypnotized. It wasn’t just because I had budge in me. But he’ll never get to Breed ahead of _me_. That’ll be his game, of course.”

“Better make your getaway to-night and beat him to it,” suggested Pratt.

Dragg was profane in his rejection of this counsel. He stated that Pratt ought to have more sense than to think a project of that order could be settled by a sprinting-match.

“You know what Callas prairie is in March as well as I do,” he sputtered. “It would be a gamble which one of us would get across first if it comes to a race through that ‘’dobe’ mud. It’s all luck whether a stage-coach or a wagon or a cayuse gets through. I’d have gone around and come into Breed from the south, but I thought I’d rather tackle sixteen miles of Callas mud in March than ride six hundred miles in jerk-water trains. See here, Pratt, I’ve got to have time to operate this thing without that shark hanging to me. He’s afraid of Ike. I don’t know what made him tell me so--but he was so mighty sure that Ike was East that he wanted to shoot his mouth off a little so as to aggravate me, I reckon. He has got to be held here in Royal City till I can pull off my job in Breed. I’m not going to have him racing me around over the country, with a chance of his queering the whole proposition. Now come into this thing and help me out, will you?”

Mr. Pratt yawned audibly and allowed that he would not.

“Then get word to Ike Dawlin for me,” pleaded Dragg.

“I don’t think he wants to be bothered,” drawled Pratt, indifferently. “I won’t send for him. That’s final!”

I think it would have been hard telling at that moment who was more disappointed, Mr. Dragg or myself!

I had reckoned specially on Mr. Dawlin. He was boss of the gang, according to his brother’s telling. In all Likelihood he was better thatched with greenbacks than anybody else in the band.

“Furthermore,” stated Mr. Pratt, “I can’t be bothered with your business. I have some of my own to attend to. I’m going to jump the train to-morrow and get back to some place where it’s safe to wear real clothes instead of a diving-suit or overalls.”

And so I was going to lose Mr. Pratt!

To be sure, I had not exactly made up my mind what to do with him if he remained in Royal City; but if he were to start on some kind of a hike and we were obliged to chase him we would betray ourselves and our case, sure as fate. Mr. Pratt was certainly no fool, and would know how to cover a trail the moment he suspected that somebody was chasing him. But I could see no reasonable way of keeping an independent gentleman of his nature in that dump of a Royal City.

“I tell you, you are turning down a good lay when you duck out on this Breed--”

“Oh, hell!” snapped Pratt with all kinds of coarse scorn in his tone. “About all this re-locating business amounts to is that you’ll either be bored in the back or boarded in jail! I’ve been studying the game, Dragg.” He grew confidential. “That’s why I ran down here to this hog-wallow. Ike and I came. These lines here are run by guess and by gad! There’s no clear title back of the land. We figured we would jump in.”

“You’d have the law behind you,” insisted Dragg. “Sure! And all the citizens who own guns, too! The trouble is, Dragg, they all know they’re skating on thin ice. They are looking for something to drop. And so as to be ready for trouble when it comes they have gone to work and got just as mad as they can stick so that they can put a claim-jumper where he belongs in a hurry. None of it for me, Dragg.”

The other muttered.

“I tell you, Dragg,” insisted Mr. Pratt, “I’d hate to be the man to put my name on to a re-location stake in this place! Law to back you--yes! But I have been testing out their temper! It’s dangerous.”

“But mobs don’t do up men any longer in this part of the country.”

“Perhaps I stated it a little strong, Dragg. But a fellow who tries to put anything over on this town, with the people here in their present temper, will get slammed into the pen--and there’s no knowing when they’ll let him out!”

And if that wasn’t a straight tip from Mr. Pratt to a poor young chap in desperate need of good counsel and help in a ticklish matter, then I’m no guesser.

“So it’s back up the line for me--where I can buy a cocktail and get the smell of this tarred paper out of my clothes!”

But Mr. Pratt’s tip was such a helpful one that, providing Judge Kingsley had had a drop of sporting blood in him, I would have posted a little bet that Mr. Pratt would stay on with us for a while. I could see that the judge had made up his mind already that we had lost our Mr. Pratt.

“Sit here and don’t make a sound!” I whispered, and I pussy-footed for the door.

He opened his mouth and I shook my fist at him. I hoped I had on a demoniac expression--I tried to put one on.

“Go to the devil, you and Dawlin, too!” barked Dragg. “If I’ve got to handle this thing single-handed, the make will be all the bigger for me. I’m all done worrying about an Eastern shyster beating me out of the game on my own stamping-ground. If he tries to take the stage in the morning to cross Callas prairie, I’ll smash that plug-hat down over his eyes, yank them guns out from under his coat-tail and blow him into the middle of next week. I’ll think up a story that will let me out.”

Ah, so Mr. Dragg must be considered along with ‘Mr. Pratt and Mr. Dawlin!

I left the room and hurried down-stairs, hoping the stores had not closed. My mind was mighty busy! I found a store that was still open. It was the “Imperial Emporium” and seemed to be well named, for I was able to purchase there a pair of shears, some spirit gum, a carpenter’s lead-pencil, and a huge ball of twine. Then I hustled back to Zebulon Kingsley, who sat livid and rigid, listening to the bragging of the man who had robbed him.

I suppose the stuff I tossed on the bed looked mighty queer to him, and I wasn’t just sure about all of it myself. But I did not dare to ask any leading questions in Royal City about claim-jumping and I decided to tumble along alone, doing my little best as an amateur.

Zebulon Kingsley was in a sufficiently volcanic state of mind without any more stirring up.

It’s a wonder that I ever got away with what I started on next in my case.

Perhaps his settled idea that I had lost my mind assisted in taming him enough so that he submitted in his fear that I might become violent. I look back now and wonder how I ever presumed so greatly even in the emergency that had arisen. But if “Peacock” Pratt were to remain in Royal City and if Ike Dawlin would join him, as I anticipated, the man with me must not be known as Zebulon Kingsley, of Levant, their victim. So I stood in front of Judge Kingsley and issued an ultimatum.

I’ll never forget the look on his face!

XIX--THE JOB Of AN ALTRUIST

THE judge sat there with his hat and coat on; the looks of that room did not invite anybody to take any comfort in it.

I leaned close to his ear and told him to stand up. Then I began to peel off his wrappings--overcoat, undercoat, and waistcoat. But when I unbuttoned his collar he pushed me away.

“I’ll explain it out to you just as soon as I get a chance, sir,” I whispered. “But we mustn’t make any noise here.” I gathered my courage. “I’m going to cut off your beard!” I had to clap my hand over his mouth to keep him quiet. “I can’t argue now! If Pratt lays eyes on you he’ll stampede. We mustn’t let any of that money get away.” I pushed him back upon the chair. “Keep down your hands,” I urged. “It’s got to be done. Your money is at stake--remember that! What’s a few whiskers compared with ten thousand dollars!” I was talking just as if I expected to swap hair for money.

I confess I did not have much of a plan worked out just at that moment--but certain notions were coming to me in sections, as one might say. And the principal notion just then was that I must not let a set of whiskers, even if they grew on Judge Kingsley, flag the whole proposition. That was the first thing to look after, now that we were close to the game--change his looks!

He realized as well as I that we couldn’t start any riot there on our side of that paper partition. I don’t believe any other consideration would have made him give in to me. If I had been getting his neck ready for the ax his looks would not have been more wild. I clipped his beard as carefully as I could with the shears and laid the tufts, as I removed them, in a little heap on the bed.

Mr. Pratt was thoroughly tired of hearing Mr. Dragg repeat himself; we knew that because Mr. Pratt said so with a lot of vigor and stated that he was going to bed in his own room.

Mr. Dragg advised him to be up early and see what happened to the “plug-hatter,” providing said “plug-hatter” tried to get away for Breed on the stage.

“I’ll do it,” promised Mr. Pratt. “I haven’t been having much fun down in this hog-wallow, and I need to have my feelings cheered up.”

Then he marched away down the corridor, making the whole building creak and shiver.

Mr. Dragg had considerable to say to himself, in the way of rehearsing his threats, while he was kicking off his shoes and getting ready for bed. Then his mutterings ended in a rasping snore--and he was off!

I was glad he was asleep because that gave me a chance to talk to the judge, keeping my voice down cautiously.

“I have some other plans, sir! I have had to think pretty quick! But the talk between those scamps has given me a rather good idea, I think.”

“You seem to be wasting your time on a lot of silly business,” muttered the judge. “This is boy’s play out of a detective dime novel, sir. We know where one of the robbers is. We can have him arrested. We can put the screws to him and find out where the other renegade is.”

“But that means going to law, Judge!”

“We must let the law handle it from now on.”

“We can’t afford to do that, sir.”

“But the law will--”

“The law will grab the crooks, maybe. But your money will be tied up along with ’em. We are strangers out here, Judge Kingsley. And you don’t want the notoriety of the thing. Remember, you bought a gold brick!” He winced, but it wasn’t on account of the shears! “Just getting those crooks into jail won’t help your case,” I insisted. “We haven’t much time to turn around in. The fifteenth of April isn’t very far away. I reckon it’s going to mean getting ten thousand dollars in ten days!” He cringed. “The law is too slow and careful for us just now! They pulled that money off by a trick. We must get it back by---- Well, I don’t know just yet how we’ll get it back--but it won’t be by any law business.”

“Do you intend to rob them and mix me into more trouble?”

“I’d rob ’em in a minute if I could do it and get away,” I told him, calmly. And then, because he was getting excited, I advised him to keep his jaw still so that the shears might not slip and cut him.

When the clipping was done I got my little kit out of my bag and got ready to shave him; there was a tin dish full of water in the corner of the room. Of course he was glad to have the stubble I had left under his chin scraped off, and submitted quietly. However, I knew my real tussle with Judge Zebulon Kingsley was just ahead of me.

On the wall there was a little mirror with glass so wavy that it made a human face seem like the physog of a baboon. I pulled it down and showed the judge his countenance with his whiskers off.

“You see it doesn’t change your looks very much, after all, Judge. Your beard was all under your chin instead of on your face.” I didn’t want to jump him too suddenly.

“If you have changed my looks as much as that glass represents, you’ve done a good job,” he said, dryly. It was the first time I had ever heard anything like humor from him, and I was cheered and made bolder--so bold that I came right out with it!

“I’ll have to change your appearance just a bit more, Judge. I know how to do it, for I did it once in my own case.”

I uncorked the bottle of gum. But when I started toward him he did not depend on his hands for defense--he put up his foot and pushed me away. I protested.

“There’s no use going half-way in this thing, sir. It only means a mustache for you out of your own beard.”

“I won’t be cockawhooped up in any such style!”

“Are you going to let those men recognize you as the town treasurer of Levant?”

He glared at me and kept his foot up.

“We’re after the money--we’re after the money!” I urged. “Just think what a little thing this is you’re balking on, sir!”

“But you give me no hint as to how you expect to get the money! I’m at the end of my patience. I won’t submit to any more foolishness.”

“This isn’t foolishness, Judge Kingsley! It’s a precaution we must take. I’ve got a plan to keep those men from jumping out on us in the morning--and they’ll be sure to see you.” I pushed down his foot and I picked up the hair on the bed and looked resolute. “It’s got to be done, sir. I’m going to do it!”

He gave in to me as he had in other cases when I became savage, but I realized that fury boiled in him.

I made a mighty good job of it, if I do say so, but he angrily refused to look at himself in the glass. I used all the hair in his beard and gave him a mustache that fairly cut in half that hatchet face of his; his best friend would not have known Judge Kingsley.

I advised him to go to bed and to be sure to sleep on his back so that the mustache would not be disturbed.

I sharpened the carpenter’s pencil and hid the ball of twine under my coat, the judge looking at me as savage as a bear.

“Now what?” he growled.

“Do you know anything about the right way of relocating a claim?” I asked. “Anything in law about it?”

“It’s more likely to be described in the thieves’ catechism,” he snarled. “I have never owned a copy!”.

That’s all the help I got from _him!_

Well, if I didn’t know much about the regular way, I reckoned I could make considerable trouble in town by blundering along with a little way of my own. So I tiptoed down-stairs.

Apparently Royal City had quit the job and gone to sleep. The hotel office was dark, and when I stepped forth into the night there was no glimmer of light anywhere. Even the lanterns that served as the city’s municipal lighting-plant in the streets had burned out or had been blown out. It was a case of grope, but I had looked about carefully when I went shopping and had a pretty good memory for locations.

There was a little pile of laths at the corner of the hotel. I had noticed them when I had lurked in the shadows with Judge Kingsley. I picked up a lath and wrote on its side, well up toward one end, “Relocated. Dragg.” Then I pushed the lath down into the mud at the corner of the hotel and tied to it the end of the ball of twine. With several laths under my arm I proceeded a few paces, unwinding the twine, and pushed another lath down and knotted my string about its end. Thus I circumnavigated the hotel, sticking down marked laths, knotting about them the twine. In this fashion I calculated I had declared on one Dragg a re-location of the hotel site--or rather made it seem that Dragg had tried on a clumsy trick to jump a land claim.