A Fool for Love Part 9

"Yes, thanks. Have another cigar?"

"Don't care if I do. Say, that old fire-eater back yonder in the private car has got a mighty pretty gal, ain't he?"

"The young lady is his niece," said Winton, wishing that Mr. Biggin would find other food for comment.

"I don't care; she's pretty as a Jersey two-year-old."

"It's a fine day," observed Winton; and then, to background Miss Carteret effectually as a topic: "How do the people of Argentine feel about the opposition to our line?"

"They're red-hot; you can put your money on that. The C. G. R.'s a sure-enough tail-twister where there ain't no compet.i.tion. Your road'll get every pound of ore in the camp if it ever gets through."

Winton made a mental note of this up-cast of public opinion, and set it over against the friendly att.i.tude of the official Mr. Biggin. It was very evident that the town-marshal was serving the Rajah's purpose only because he had to.

"I suppose you stand with your townsmen on that, don't you?" he ventured.

"Now you're shouting: that's me."

"Then if that is the case, we won't take this little holiday of ours any harder than we can help. When the court business is settled--it won't take very long--you are to consider yourself my guest. We stop at the Buckingham."

"Oh, we do, do we? Say, pardner, that's white--mighty white. If I'd 'a' been an inch or so more'n half awake this morning when that old b'iler-buster's hired man routed me out, I'd 'a' told him to go to blazes with his warrant. Nex' time I will."

Winton shook his head. "There isn't going to be any 'next time,'

Peter, my son," he prophesied. "When Mr. Darrah gets fairly down to business he'll throw bigger chunks than the Argentine town-marshal at us."

By this time the train was slowing into Carbonate, and a few minutes after the stop at the crowded platform they were making their way up the single bustling street of the town to the court-house.

"Ever see so many tin-horns and bunco people bunched in all your round-ups?" said Biggin, as they elbowed through the uneasy shifting groups in front of the hotel.

"Not often," Winton admitted. "But it's the luck of the big camps: they are the dumping-grounds of the world while the high pressure is on."

The ex-range-rider turned on the courthouse steps to look the sidewalk loungers over with narrowing eyes.

"There's Sheeny Mike and Big Otto and half a dozen others right there in front o' the Buckingham that couldn't stay to breathe twice in Argentine. And this town's got a po-lice!"--the comment with lip-curling scorn.

"It also has a county court which is probably waiting for us," said Winton; whereupon they went in to appease the offended majesty of the law.

As Winton had predicted, his answer to the court summons was a mere formality. On parting with his chief at the Argentine station platform, Adams' first care had been to wire news of the arrest to the Utah headquarters. Hence Winton found the company's attorney waiting for him in Judge Whitcomb's courtroom, and his release on an appearance bond was only a matter of moments.

The legal affair dismissed, there ensued a weary interval of time-killing. There was no train back to Argentine until nearly five o'clock in the afternoon, and the hours dragged heavily for the two, who had nothing to do but wait. Biggin endured his part of it manfully till the midday dinner had been discussed; then he drifted off with one of Winton's cigars between his teeth, saying that he should "take poison" and shoot up the town if he could not find some more peaceful means of keeping his blood in circulation.

It was a little after three o'clock, and Winton was sitting at the writing-table in the lobby of the hotel elaborating his hasty notebook data of the morning's inspection, when a boy came in with a telegram.

The young engineer was not so deeply engrossed in his work as to be deaf to the colloquy.

"Mr. John Winton? Yes, he is here somewhere," said the clerk in answer to the boy's question; and after an identifying glance: "There he is--over at the writing-table."

Winton turned in his chair and saw the boy coming toward him; also he saw the ruffian pointed out by Biggin from the court-house steps and labeled "Sheeny Mike" lounging up to the clerk's desk for a whispered exchange of words with the bediamonded gentleman behind it.

What followed was cataclysmic in its way. The lounger took three staggering lurches toward Winton, brushed the messenger boy aside, and burst out in a storm of maudlin invective.

"Sign yerself 'Winton' now, do yet ye lowdown, turkey-trodden--"

"One minute," said Winton curtly, taking the telegram from the boy and signing for it.

"I'll give ye more'n ye can carry away in less'n half that time--see?"

was the minatory retort; and the threat was made good by an awkward buffet which would have knocked the engineer out of his chair if he had remained in it.

Now Winton's eyes were gray and steadfast, but his hair was of that shade of brown which takes the tint of dull copper in certain lights, and he had a temper which went with the red in his hair rather than with the gray in his eyes. Wherefore his attempt to placate his a.s.sailant was something less than diplomatic.

"You drunken scoundrel!" he snapped. "If you don't go about your business and let me alone, I'll turn you over to the police with a broken bone or two!"

The bully's answer was a blow delivered straight from the shoulder--too straight to harmonize with the fiction of drunkenness. Winton saw the sober purpose in it and went battle-mad, as a hasty man will. Being a skilful boxer,--which his antagonist was not,--he did what he had to do neatly and with commendable despatch. Down, up; down, up; down a third time, and then the bystanders interfered.

"Hold on!"

"That'll do!"

"Don't you see he's drunk?"

"Enough's as good as a feast--let him go."

Winton's blood was up, but he desisted, breathing threatenings.

Whereat Biggin shouldered his way into the circle.

"Pay your bill and let's hike out o' this, _p.r.o.nto_!" he said in a low tone. "You ain't got no time to fool with a Carbonate justice shop."

But Winton was not to be brought to his senses so easily.

"Run away from that swine? Not if I know it. Let him take it into court if he wants to. I'll be there, too."

The beaten one was up now and apparently looking for an officer.

"I'm takin' ye all to witness," he rasped. "I was on'y askin' him to cash up what he lost to me las' night, and he jumps me. But I'll stick him if there's any law in this camp."

Now all this time Winton had been holding the unopened telegram crumpled in his fist, but when Biggin pushed him out of the circle and thrust him up to the clerk's desk, he bethought him to read the message. It was Virginia's warning, signed by Adams, and a single glance at the closing sentence was enough to cool him suddenly.

"Pay the bill, Biggin, and join me in the billiard-room, quick!" he whispered, pressing money into the town-marshal's hand and losing himself in the crowd. And when Biggin had obeyed his instructions: "Now for a back way out of this, if there is one. We'll have to take to the hills till train time."

They found a way through the bar and out into a side street leading abruptly up to the spruce-clad hills behind the town. Biggin held his peace until they were safe from immediate danger of pursuit. Then his curiosity got the better of him.

"Didn't take you more'n a week to change your mind about pullin' it off with that tinhorn sc.r.a.pper in the courts, did it?"

"No," said Winton.

"'Tain't none o' my business, but I'd like to know what stampeded you."

"A telegram,"--shortly. "It was a put-up job to have me locked up on a criminal charge, and so hold me out another day."

Biggin grinned. "The old b'iler-buster again. Say, he's a holy terror, ain't he?"