Copper Streak Trail Part 22

"Hadn't you better ask him?" said Peter, very reasonably. "You come on down to the office, sheriff. I want you to get at the bottom of this or have the heart out of some one." He rolled a dancing eye at Poole with the word, and Poole shrank before it.

"Breakfast! Bring us our breakfast!" bawled the prisoners. "Breakfast!"

The sheriff dealt leniently with the uproar, realizing that these were but weakling folk and, under the influence of excitement, hardly responsible.

"Brooks has been tied up all night, and is all but dead. I'll get you something as soon as I can," he said, "on condition that you stop that hullabaloo at once. Johnson, come down to the office."

He telephoned a hurry call to a restaurant, Brooks, the jailer, being plainly incapable of furnishing breakfast. Then he turned to Pete.

"What is this, Johnson? A plant?"

Pete's nose quivered.

"Sure! It was a plant from the first. The Pooles were hired to set upon me. This one was sent, masked, to tell me to break out. Then, as I figure it, I was to be betrayed back again, to get two or three years in the pen for breaking jail. Nice little scheme!"

"Who did it? For Poole, if you're not lying, was only a tool."

"Sheriff," said Pete, "pa.s.s your hand through my hair and feel there, and look at my face. See any scars? Quite a lot of 'em? And all in front? Men like me don't have to lie. They pay for what they break. You go back up there and get after Poole. He'll tell you. Any man that will do what he did to me, for money, will squeal on his employer. Sure!"

Overhead the hammering and shouting broke out afresh.

"There," said the sheriff regretfully; "now I'll have to make those fellows go without anything to eat till dinner-time."

"Sheriff," said Pete, "you've been mighty square with me. Now I want you should do me one more favor. It will be the last one; for I shan't be with you long. Give those boys their breakfast. I got 'em into this. I'll pay for it, and take it mighty kindly of you, besides."

"Oh, all right!" growled the sheriff, secretly relieved.

"One thing more, brother: I think your jailer was in this--but that's your business. Anyhow, Poole knew which key opened my door, and he didn't know the others. Of course, he may have forced your jailer to tell him that. But Poole didn't strike me as being up to any bold enterprise unless it was cut-and-dried."

The sheriff departed, leaving Johnson unguarded in the office. In ten minutes he was back.

"All right," he nodded. "He confessed--whimpering hard. Brooks was in it.

I've got him locked up. Nice doings, this is!"

"Mitch.e.l.l?"

"Yes. I wouldn't have thought it of him. What was the reason?"

"There is never but one reason. Money.--Who's this?"

It was Mr. Boland, attended by Mr. Ferdie Sedgwick, both sadly disheveled and bearing marks of a sleepless night. Francis Charles spoke hurriedly to the sheriff.

"Oh, I say, Barton! McClintock will go bail for this man Johnson. Ferdie and I would, but we're not taxpayers in the county. Come over to the Iroquois, won't you?"

"Boland," said the sheriff solemnly, "take this scoundrel out of my jail!

Don't you ever let him step foot in here again. There won't be any bail; but he must appear before His Honor later to-day for the formal dismissal of the case. Take him away! If you can possibly do so, ship him out of town at once."

Francis Charles winked at Peter as they went down the steps.

"So it was you last night?" said Peter. "Thanks to you. I'll do as much for you sometime."

"Thank us both. This is my friend Sedgwick, who was to have been our chauffeur." The two gentlemen bowed, grinning joyfully. "My name's Boland, and I'm to be your first stockholder. Miss Selden told me about you--which is my certificate of character. Come over to the hotel and see Old McClintock. Miss Selden is there too. She bawled him out about Nephew Stan last night. Regular old-fashioned wigging! And now she has the old gentleman eating from her hand. Say, how about this Stanley thing, anyway? Any good?"

"Son," said Pete, "Stanley is a regular person."

Boland's face clouded.

"Well, I'm going out with you and have a good look at him," he said gloomily. "If I'm not satisfied with him, I'll refuse my consent. And I'll look at your mine--if you've got any mine. They used to say that when a man drinks of the waters of the Ha.s.sayampa, he can never tell the truth again. And you're from Arizona."

Pete stole a shrewd look at the young man's face.

"There is another old saying about the Ha.s.sayampa, son," he said kindly, "with even more truth to it than in that old _dicho_. They say that whoever drinks of the waters of the Ha.s.sayampa must come to drink again."

He bent his brows at Francis Charles.

"Good guess," admitted Boland, answering the look. "I've never been to Arizona, but I've sampled the Pecos and the Rio Grande; and I must go back 'Where the flyin'-fishes play on the road to Mandalay, where the dawn comes up like thunder'--Oh, gee! That's my real reason. I suppose that silly girl and your picturesque pardner will marry, anyhow, even if I disapprove--precious pair they'll make! And if I take a squint at the copper proposition, it will be mostly in Ferdie's interest--Ferdie is the capitalist, comparatively speaking; but he can't tear himself away from little old N'Yawk. This is his first trip West--here in Vesper. Myself, I've got only two coppers to clink together--or maybe three. We're rather overlooking Ferdie, don't you think? Mustn't do that. Might withdraw his backin'. Ferdie, speak up pretty for the gennulmun!"

"Oh, don't mind me, Mr. Johnson," said Sedgwick cheerfully. "I'm used to hearin' Boland hog the conversation, and trottin' to keep up with him.

Glad to be seen on the street with him. Gives one a standing, you know.

But, I say, old chappie, why didn't you come last night? Deuced anxious, we were! Thought you missed the way, or slid down your rope and got nabbed again, maybe. No end of a funk I was in, not being used to lawbreakin', except by advice of counsel. And we felt a certain delicacy about inquiring about you this morning, you know--until we heard about the big ructions at the jail. Come over to McClintock's rooms--can't you?--where we'll be all together, and tell us about it--so you won't have to tell it but the one time."

"No, sir," said Pete decidedly. "I get my breakfast first, and a large shave. Got to do credit to Stan. Then I'll go with you. Big mistake, though. Story like this gets better after bein' told a few times. I could make quite a tale of this, with a little practice."

CHAPTER XV

"You've got Stan sized up all wrong, Mr. McClintock," said Pete. "That boy didn't want your money. He never so much as mentioned your name to me. If he had, I would have known why Old Man Trouble was haunting him so persistent. And he don't want anybody's money. He's got a-plenty of his own--in prospect. And he's got what's better than money: he has learned to do without what he hasn't got."

"You say he has proved himself a good man of his hands?" demanded McClintock sharply.

"Yessir--Stanley is sure one double-fisted citizen," said Pete. "Here is what I heard spoken of him by highest authority the day before I left: 'He'll make a hand!' That was the word said of Stan to me. We don't get any higher than that in Arizona. When you say of a man, 'He'll do to take along,' you've said it all. And Stanley Mitch.e.l.l will do to take along.

I'm thinkin', sir, that you did him no such an ill turn when your quarrel sent him out there. He was maybe the least bit inclined to be b.u.t.ter-flighty when he first landed."

It was a queer gathering. McClintock sat in his great wheeled chair, leaning against the cushions; he held a silken skull-cap in his hand, revealing a shining poll with a few silvered locks at side and back; his little red ferret eyes, fiery still, for all the burden of his years, looked piercingly out under s.h.a.ggy brows. His attendant, withered and brown and gaunt, stood silent behind him. Mary Selden, quiet and pale, was at the old man's left hand. Pete Johnson, with one puffed and discolored eye, a bruised cheek, and with skinned and bandaged knuckles, but cheerful and sunny of demeanor, sat facing McClintock. Boland and Sedgwick sat a little to one side. They had tried to withdraw, on the plea of intrusion; but McClintock had overruled them and bade them stay.

"For the few high words that pa.s.sed atween us, I care not a boddle--though, for the cause of them I take shame to myself," said McClintock, glancing down affectionately at Mary Selden. "I was the more misled--at the contrivance of yon fleechin' scoundrel of an Oscar. 'I'm off to Arizona, to win the boy free,' says he--the leein' cur!... I will say this thing, too, that my heart warmed to the lad at the very time of it--that he had s.p.u.n.k to speak his mind. I have seen too much of the supple stock. Sirs, it is but an ill thing to be over-rich, in which estate mankind is seen at the worst. The fawning sort cringe underfoot for favors, and the true breed of kindly folk are all o'erapt to pa.s.s the rich man by, verra scornful-like." He looked hard at Peter Johnson. "I am naming no names," he added.

"As for my gear, it would be a queer thing if I could not do what I like with my own. Even a gay young birkie like yoursel' should understand that, Mr. Johnson. Besides, we talk of what is by. The lawyer has been; Van Lear has given him instructions, and the pack of you shall witness my hand to the bit paper that does Stan right, or ever you leave this room."

Pete shrugged his shoulders. "Stanley will always be feelin' that I softied it up to you. And he's a stiff-necked one--Stan!"

McClintock laughed with a relish.

"For all ye are sic a fine young man, Mr. Johnson, I'm doubtin' ye're no deeplomat. And Stan will be knowin' that same. Here is what ye shall do: you shall go to him and say that you saw an old man sitting by his leelane, handfast to the chimney neuk; and that you are thinking I will be needin' a friendly face, and that you think ill of him for that same stiff neck of his. Ye will be having him come to seek and not to gie; folk aye like better to be forgiven than to forgive; I do, mysel'. That is what you shall do for me."

"And I did not come to coax money from you to develop the mine with, either," said Pete. "If the play hadn't come just this way, with the jail and all, you would have seen neither hide nor hair of me."