"Hello, Wiley! Thought you had gone to Silverbell so wild and fierce."

"Am a-going now," said Wiley, "soon as I throw a couple or three drinks under my belt."

"Say, Bat, do you think you'll make the morning train? It's going on nine now."

"Surest thing you know! That span of mine can stroll along mighty peart. Once I get out on the flat, we'll burn the breeze."

"Come over here, then," said Zurich. "I want you to take some cash and send it down to the bank by express—about eight hundred; and some checks besides. I can't wait for the stage—it won't get there till to-morrow night. I've overdrawn my account, with my usual carelessness, and I want this money to get to the bank before the checks do."

Stanley went back to his little one-roomed house. He shaved, bathed, laid out his Sunday best, re-read his precious letters, and dropped off to dreamless sleep.

Between midnight and one o'clock Bat Wiley, wild-eyed and raging, burst into the barroom of the Admiral Dewey and startled with a tale of wrongs such part of wakeful Cobre as there made wassail. At the crossing of Largo Draw he had been held up at a gun's point by a single robber on horseback; Zurich's money had been taken from him, together with some seventy dollars of his own; his team had been turned loose; it had taken him nearly an hour to catch them again, so delaying the alarm by that much.

Boots and spurs; saddling of horses; Bob Holland, the deputy sheriff, was called from his bed; a swift posse galloped into the night, joined at the last moment by Mr. Dewing, who had retired early, but had been roused by the clamor.

They came to Largo Crossing at daybreak. The trail of the robber's horse led straight to Cobre, following bypaths through the mountains. The tracks showed plainly that his coming had been by these same short cuts, saving time while Bat Wiley had followed the tortuous stage road through the hills. Halfway back a heavy spur lay in the trail; some one recognized it as Stanley Mitchell's—a smith-wrought spur, painfully fashioned from a single piece of drill steel.

They came to Cobre before sunup; they found brown Awguan, dejected and sweat-streaked, standing in hip-shot weariness on the hill near his corral. In the corral Stanley's saddle lay in the sand, the blankets sweat-soaked.

Unwillingly enough, Holland woke Stan from a smiling sleep to arrest him. They searched the little room, finding the mate to the spur found on the trail, but nothing else to their purpose. But at last, bringing Stan's saddle in before locking the house, Bull Pepper noticed a bumpy appearance in the sheepskin lining, and found, between saddle skirt and saddle tree, the stolen money in full, and even the checks that Zurich had sent.

They haled Stan before the justice, who was also proprietor of the Mountain House. Waiving examination, Stanley Mitchell was held to meet the action of the Grand Jury; and in default of bond—his guilt being assured and manifest—he was committed to Tucson Jail.

The morning stage, something delayed on his account, bore him away under guard, en route, most clearly, for the penitentiary.



CHAPTER VII

Mr. Peter Johnson's arrival in Morning Gate Pass was coincident with that of a very bright and businesslike sun. Mr. Johnson had made a night ride from the Gavilan country, where he had spent the better part of a pleasant week, during which he had contrived to commingle a minimum of labor with a joyous maximum of innocent amusement. The essence of these diversions consisted of attempts—purposely clumsy—to elude the vigilance of such conspirator prospectors as yet remained to neighbor him; sudden furtive sallies and excursions, beginning at all unreasonable and unexpected hours, ending always in the nothing they set out for, followed always by the frantic espionage of his mystified and bedeviled guardians—on whom the need fell that some of them must always watch while their charge reposed from his labors.

Tiring at last of this pastime, observing also that his playfellows grew irritable and desperate, Mr. Johnson had sagely concluded that his entertainment palled. Caching most of his plunder and making a light pack of the remainder, he departed, yawning, taking trail for Cobre in the late afternoon of the day preceding his advent in Morning Gate.

He perched on the saddle, with a leg curled round the horn; he whistled the vivacious air of Tule, Tule Pan, a gay fanfaronade of roistering notes, the Mexican words for which are, for considerations of high morality, best unsung.

The pack-horses paced down the trail, far ahead, with snatched nibblings at convenient wayside tufts of grass.

Jackson Carr, freighter, was still camped at Hospital Springs. He lifted up his eyes as this careless procession sauntered down the hills; and, rising, intercepted its coming at the forks of the trail, heading the pack-horses in toward his camp. He walked with a twisting limp, his blue eyes were faded and pale, his bearded face was melancholy and sad; but as he seated himself on a stone and waited for Johnson's coming, some of the sadness passed and his somber face lit up with unwonted animation.

"Howdy, Pete! I heard yuh was coming. I waited for yuh."

Pete leaped from his horse and gripped the freighter's hand.

"Jackson Carr, by all that's wonderful! Jack, old man! How is it with you?"

Jackson Carr hesitated, speaking slowly:

"Sally's gone, Pete. She died eight years ago. She had a hard life of it, Pete. Gay and cheerful to the last, though. Always such a brave little trick..."

His voice trailed off to silence. It was long before Pete Johnson broke upon that silence.

"We'll soon be by with it, Jack. Day before yesterday we was boys together in Uvalde an' Miss Sally a tomboy with us. To-morrow will be no worse, as I figure it." He looked hard at the hills. "It can't be all a silly joke. That would be too stupid! No jolthead made these hills. It's all right, I reckon.... And the little shaver? He was only a yearlin' when I saw him last. And I haven't heard a word about you since."

"Right as rain, Bobby is. Goin' on ten now. Of course 'tain't as if he had his mother to look after him; but I do the best I can by him. Wish he had a better show for schoolin', though. I haven't been prosperin' much—since Sally died. Seems like I sorter lost my grip. But I aim to put Bobby in school here when it starts up, next fall. I am asking you no questions about yourself, Pete, because I have done little but ask questions about you since I first heard you were here, four or five days ago."

"By hooky, Jack, I never expected to see you again. Where you been all these years? And how'd you happen to turn up here?"

"Never mind me, Pete. Here is too much talk of my affairs and none of yours. Man, I have news for your ear! Your pardner's in jail."

"Ya-as? What's he been doin' now?"

"Highway robbery. He got caught with the goods on. Eight or nine hundred."

"The little old skeesicks! Who'd have thought it of him?" said Pete tolerantly. Then his face clouded over. "He might have let me in on it!" he complained. "Jack, you lead me to your grub pile and tell me all about it. Sounds real interestin'. Where's Bob? He asleep yet?"

"Huh! Asleep?" said Carr with a sniff that expressed fatherly pride in no small degree.

"Not him! Lit out o' here at break o' day—him and that devil horse of his, wrangling the work stock. He's a mighty help to me. I ain't very spry on my pins since—you know."

To eke out the words he gave an extra swing to his twisted leg. They came to a great freight wagon under a tree, with tackle showing that it was a six-horse outfit.

"Here we are! 'Light down and unsaddle, Petey, and we'll take off the packs. Turn your horses loose. Bobby'll look out for them when he comes. No need to hobble. There! Wash up? Over yonder's the pan. I'll pour your coffee and one for myself. I've eaten already. Pitch in!"

Pete equipped himself with tinware and cutlery, doubled one leg under and sat upon it before the fire. From the ovens and skillets on the embers Pete heaped his plate with a savory stew, hot sourdough bread, fried rabbit, and canned corn fried to a delicate golden brown. Pete took a deep draught of the unsweetened hot black coffee, placed the cup on the sand beside him, and gathered up knife and fork.

From the farther side of the fire Carr brought another skillet, containing jerky, with onions and canned tomatoes.

"From the recipe of a nobleman in the county," he said.

"Now, then," said Pete, "tell it to me."

So Carr told him at length the story of the robbery and Stanley Mitchell's arrest, aided by a few questions from Pete.

"And the funny thing is, there's a lot of folks not so well satisfied yet, for all they found the money and notwithstandin' the young feller himself didn't make no holler. They say he wasn't that kind. The deputy sher'f, 'special, says he don't believe but what it was a frame-up to do him. And Bull Pepper, that found the money hid in the saddle riggin', says he: 'That money was put there a-purpose to be found; fixed so it wouldn't be missed.'"

He looked a question.

"Ya-as," said Pete.

Thus encouraged, Carr continued:

"And Old Mose Taylor, at the Mountain House—Mitchell got his hearin' before him, you know—he says Mitchell ain't surprised or excited or much worried, and makes no big kick, just sits quiet, a-studyin', and he's damned if he believes he ever done it. Oh, yes! Mose told me if I see you to tell you young Mitchell left some money in the safe for you."

"Ya-as," said Pete. "Here comes your caballada. Likely looking horses, Jack."

"A leetle thin," said Carr.

He took six nose-bags, already filled, and fed his wagon stock. Bobby pulled the saddle from the Nan-na pony, tied him to a bush, and gave him breakfast from his own small morral. Then he sidled toward the fire.

"Bobby, come over here," said Bobby's father. "This is your stepuncle Pete."

Bobby complied. He gave Pete a small grimy hand and looked him over thoughtfully from tip to tip, opening his blue eyes to their widest for that purpose, under their long black lashes.

"You Stan Mitchell's pardner?"

"I am that."

"You goin' to break him out o' the pen?"

"Surest thing you know!" said Pete.

"That's good!" He relaxed his grip on Pete's hand and addressed himself to breakfast. "I like Stan," he announced, with his head in the chuck-box.

Pete used the opportunity to exchange a look with Bobby's father.

Bobby emerged from the chuck-box and resumed the topic of Stanley Mitchell.

"He'll make a hand after he's been here a spell—Stan will," he stated gravely.

"Oh, you know him, then?"

"I was with him the evenin' before the big doin's. He didn't steal no money!"

"What makes you think so?"

"Easy! He's got brains, hain't he? I rode with him maybe a mile, but I could see that. Well! If he'd stole that money, they wouldn't 'a' found it yet. Them fellows make me tired!"

Pete made a pretext of thirst and brought a bucket for water from the spring, crooking a finger at Jackson Carr to follow. Carr found him seated at the spring, shaking with laughter.

"Jack, he's all there—your boy! Couldn't any judge size it up better."

"Frame-up, then?"

"Sure! That part's all right."

"I see you wasn't much taken aback."

"No. We was expectin' something like that and had discounted it. I'm just as well pleased Stan's in jail just now, and I'm goin' to leave him there a spell. Safer there. You remember old Hank Bergman?"

Carr nodded.

"Well, Hank's the sheriff here—and he'll give us a square deal. Now I'm goin' back to interview that boy of yours some more. I reckon you're right proud of that kid, Jack."

"Yes; I am. Bobby's a pretty good boy most ways. But he swears something dreadful."

"Pull a strap off of him," said Pete warmly. "That's a damn fine boy, and you want to start him right. That's half the battle."

Pete returned to the fire for a final cup of coffee.

"Young man," he said, "would you know that brown horse Stan was ridin' when you met up with him?"

"Awguan? Sure! I'd know him in hell!" said Bobby.

"Well, Stan turned that horse loose to rustle for himself, of course. Do you reckon you could stir round and find him for me—if your dad can spare you? I want to go to the railroad to-night, and Awguan, he's fresh. My horses are tired."

"If you don't want that horse," said Bobby, "don't send me after him."

"Now, Jack," said Pete after Bobby had departed on the search for Awguan, "you go away and don't pester me. I want to think."

To the processes of thought, for the space of four pipes, he gave aid by hugging his knees, as if he had called them in consultation. Then he summoned Jackson Carr.

"How're you fixed for work, Jack?"

"None. I reckon to get plenty, though, when I get my teams fitted up. They're jaded from a lumber job."

"You're hired—for a year, month, and day. And as much longer as you like. Suit you?"

"Suits me."

"You're my foreman, then. Hire your teams the first thing. Make your own terms. I'll tell you this much—it's a big thing. A mine—a he-mine; copper. That's partly why Stan is in jail. And if it comes off, you won't need to worry about the kid's schooling. I aim to give you, extra, five per cent of my share—and, for men like you and me, five per cent of this lay is exactly the same as all of it. It's that big.

"I'm askin' you to obey orders in the dark. If you don't know any details you won't be mad, and you won't know who to be mad at; so you won't jump in to save the day if I fail to come through with my end of it on schedule, and get yourself killed off. That ain't all, either. Your face always gives you away; if you knew all the very shrewd people I'm buckin', you'd give 'em the marble eye, and they'd watch you. Not knowin' 'em, you'll treat 'em all alike, and you won't act suspicious.

"Listen now: You drift out quiet and go down on the Gila, somewhere between Mohawk Siding and Walton. Know that country? Yes? That's good. Leave your teams there and you go down to Yuma on the train. I'll get a bit of money for you in Tucson, and it'll be waitin' for you in Old Man Brownell's store, in Yuma. You get a minin' outfit, complete, and a good layout of grub, enough to last six or seven men till it's all gone, and some beddin', two or three thirty-thirty rifles, any large quantity of cartridges, and 'most anything else you see.

"Here's the particular part: Buy two more wagons, three-and-a-half-inch axles; about twenty barrels; two pack-saddles and kegs for same, for packing water from some tanks when your water wagons don't do the trick. Ship all this plunder up to Mohawk.

"Here's the idea: I'm goin' back East for capital, and I'm comin' back soon. Me and my friends—not a big bunch, but every man-jack of 'em to be a regular person—are goin' to start from Tucson, or Douglas, and hug the Mexican border west across the desert, ridin' light and fast; you're to go south with water; and Cobre is to be none the wiser. Here, I'll make you a map."

He traced the map in the sand.

"Here's the railroad, and Mohawk; here's your camp on the Gila. Just as soon as you get back, load up one of your new wagons with water and go south. There's no road, but there's two ranges that makes a lane, twenty miles wide, leadin' to the southeast: Lomas Negras, the black mountain due south of Mohawk, and Cabeza Prieta, a brown-colored range, farther west. Keep right down the middle, but miss all the sand you can; you'll be layin' out a road you'll have to travel a heap. Only, of course, you can straighten it out and better it after you learn the country. It might be a pious idea for you to ship up a mowing machine and a hayrake from Yuma, like you was fixin' to cut wild hay. It's a good plan always to leave something to satisfy curiosity. Or, play you was aimin' to dry-farm. You shape up your rig to suit yourself—but play up to it."

"I'll hay it," said Carr.

"All right—hay it, by all means. Take your first load of water out about twenty-five miles and leave it—using as little as you can to camp on. You'll have to have three full sets of chains and whiffletrees for your six-horse team, of course. You can't bother with dragging a buckboard along behind to take 'em back with. Go back to the railroad, take a second load of water, camp the first night out at your first wagon, and leave the second load of water farther south, twenty-five miles or so.

"Then go back to the Gila and pack the rest of your plunder in this wagon of yours, all ready to start the minute you get a telegram from me. Wire back to me so I'll know when to start. You will have water for your horses at twenty-five miles and fifty, and enough left to use when you go back for your next trip. After that we'll have other men to help you.

"When you leave the last wagon, put on all the water your horses can draw. You'll strike little or no sand after that and we'll need all the water we can get. With no bad luck, you come out opposite the south end of your black mountain the third day. Wait there for us. It's three long days, horseback, from Tucson; we ought to get to your camp that night.

"If we don't come, wait till noon the next day. Then saddle up, take your pack-saddles and kegs, and drag it for the extreme south end of the mountains on your west, about twenty miles. That ought to leave enough water at the wagon for us to camp on if we come later. If you wait for us, your horses will use it all up.

"When you come to the south end of your Cabeza Prieta Mountain, right spang on the border, you'll find a canon there, coming down from the north, splitting the range. Turn up that canon, and when it gets so rough you can't go any farther, keep right on; you'll find some rock tanks full of water, in a box where the sun can't get 'em. That's all. Got that?"

"I've got it," said Carr. "But Pete, aren't you taking too long a chance? Why can't I—or both of us—just slip down there quietly and do enough work on your mine to hold it? They're liable to beat you to it."

"I've been tryin' to make myself believe that a long time," said Pete earnestly; "but I am far too intelligent. These people are capable of any rudeness. And they are strictly on the lookout. I do not count myself timid, but I don't want to tackle it. That mine ain't worth over six or eight millions at best."

"But they won't be watching me," said Carr.

"Maybe not. I hope not. For one thing, you'll have a good excuse to pull out from Cobre. You won't get any freighting here. Old Zurich has got it all grabbed and contracted for. All you could get would be a subcontract, giving you a chance to do the work and let Zurich take the profit.

"Now, to come back to this mine: No one knows where it is. It's pretty safe till I go after it; and I'm pretty safe till I go after it. Once we get to it, it's going to be a case of armed pickets and Who goes there?—night and day, till we get legal title. And it's going to take slews of money and men and horses to get water and supplies to those miners and warriors. Listen: One or the other of two things—two—is going to happen. Count 'em off on your fingers. Either no one will find that mine before me and my friends meet up with you and your water, or else some one will find it before then. If no one finds it first, we've lost nothing. That's plain. But if my Cobre friends—the push that railroaded Stan to jail—if they should find that place while I'm back in New York, and little Jackson Carr working on it—Good-bye, Jackson Carr! They'd kill you without a word. That's another thing I'm going back to New York for besides getting money. There's something behind Stanley's jail trip besides the copper proposition; and that something is back in New York. I'm going to see what about it.

"Just one thing more: If we don't come, and you have to strike out for the tanks in Cabeza Mountain, you'll notice a mess of low, little, insignificant, roan-colored, squatty hills spraddled along to the south of you. You shun them hills, bearing off to your right. There's where our mine is. And some one might be watching you or following your tracks. That's all. Now I'm going to sleep. Wake me about an hour by sun."

* * * * *

Mr. Peter Johnson sat in the office of the Tucson Jail and smiled kindly upon Mr. Stanley Mitchell.

"Well, you got here at last," said Stan. "Gee, but I'm glad to see you! What kept you so long?"

"Stanley, I am surprised at you. I am so. You keep on like this and you're going to have people down on you. Too bad! But I suppose boys will be boys," said Pete tolerantly.

"I knew you'd spring something like this," said Stan. "Take your time."

"I'm afraid it's you that will take time, my boy. Can't you dig up any evidence to help you?"

"I don't see how. I went to sleep and didn't hear a thing; didn't wake up till they arrested me."

"Oh! You're claiming that you didn't do the robbin' at all? I see-e! Standing on your previous record and insistin' you're the victim of foul play? Sympathy dodge?... Hum! You stick to that, my boy," said Pete benevolently. "Maybe that's as good a show as any. Get a good lawyer. If you could hire some real fine old gentleman and a nice little old gray-haired lady to be your parents and weep at the jury, it might help a heap.... If you'd only had sense enough to have hid that money where it couldn't have been found, or where it wouldn't have been a give-away on you, at least! I suppose you was scared. But it sorter reflects back on me, since you've been running with me lately. Folks will think I should have taught you better. What made you do it, Stanley?"

"I suppose you think you're going to get me roiled, you old fool! You've got another guess, then. You can't get my nanny! But I do think you might tell me what's been going on. Even a guilty man has his curiosity. Did you get the money I left for you?"

Pete's jaw sagged; his eye expressed foggy bewilderment.

"Money? What money? I thought they got it all when they arrested you?"

"Oh, don't be a gloomy ass! The money I left with Old Man Taylor; the money you got down here for preliminary expenses on the mine."

"Mine?" echoed Pete blankly. "What mine?"

"Old stuff!" Stanley laughed aloud. "Go to it, old-timer! You can't faze me. When you get good and ready to ring off, let me know."

"Well, then," said Pete, "I will. Here we go, fresh. And you may not be just the best-pleased with my plan at first, son. I'm not going to bail you out."

"What the hell!" said Stan. "Why not?"

"I've thought it all out," said Pete, "and I've talked it over with the sheriff. He's agreed. You have to meet the action of the Grand Jury, anyhow; you couldn't leave the county; and you're better off in jail while I go back to New York to rustle money."

"Oh—you're going, are you?"

"To-night. You couldn't leave the county even if you were out on bond. The sheriff's a square man; he'll treat you right; you'll have a chance to get shut of that insomnia, and right here's the safest place in Pima County for you. I want a letter to that cousin of yours in Abingdon."

"'Tisn't Abingdon—it's Vesper. And I'm not particularly anxious to tell him that I'm in jail on a felony charge."

"Don't want you to tell him—or anybody. I suppose you've told your girl already? Yes? Thought so. Well, don't you tell any one else. You tell Cousin Oscar I'm your pardner, and all right; and that you've got a mine, and you'll guarantee the expenses for him and an expert in case they're not satisfied upon investigation. I'll do the rest. And don't you let anybody bail you out of jail. You stay here."

"If I hadn't seen you perform a miracle or two before now, I'd see you damned first!" said Stan. "But I suppose you know what you're about. It's more than I do. Make it a quick one, will you? I find myself bored here."

"I will. Let me outline two of the many possibilities: If I don't bail you out, I'm doin' you dirt, ain't I? Well, then, if Zurich & Gang think I'm double-crossin' you they'll make me a proposition to throw in with them and throw you down on the copper mine. That's my best chance to find out how to keep you from goin' to the pen, isn't it? And if you don't tell Vesper that you're in jail—but Vesper finds it out, anyhow—that gives me a chance to see who it is that lives in Vesper and keeps in touch with Cobre. And I'll tell you something else: When I come back I'll bail you out of jail and we'll start from here."

"For the mine, you mean?"

"Sure! Start right from the jail door at midnight and ride west. Zurich & Company won't be expecting that—seein' as how I left you in the lurch, this-a-way."

"But my cousin will never be able to stand that ride. It's a hundred and sixty miles—more too."

"Your cousin can join us later—or whoever ever comes along with development money. There'll be about four or five of us—picked men. I'm goin' this afternoon to see an old friend—Joe Benavides—and have him make all arrangements and be all ready to start whenever we get back, without any delay. I won't take the sheriff, because we might have negotiations to transact that would be highly indecorous in a sheriff. But he's to share my share, because he put up a lot more money for the mine to-day. I sent it on to Yuma, where an old friend of mine and the sheriff's is to buy a six-horse load of supplies and carry 'em down to join us, startin' when I telegraph him.

"Got it all worked out. You do as I tell you and you'll wear diamonds on your stripes. Give me a note for that girl of yours, too."



CHAPTER VIII

The hills send down a buttress to the north; against it the Susquehanna flows swift and straight for a little space, vainly chafing. Just where the high ridge breaks sharp and steep to the river's edge there is a grassy level, lulled by the sound of pleasant waters; there sleep the dead of Abingdon.

Here is a fair and noble prospect, which in Italy or in California had been world-famed; a beauty generous and gracious—valley, upland and hill and curving river. The hills are checkered to squares, cleared fields and green-black woods; inevitably the mind goes out to those who wrought here when the forest was unbroken, and so comes back to read on the headstones the names of the quiet dead: Hill, Barton, Clark, Green, Camp, Hunt, Catlin, Giles, Sherwood, Tracy, Jewett, Lane, Gibson, Holmes, Yates, Hopkins, Goodenow, Griswold, Steele. Something stirs at your hair-roots—these are the names of the English. A few sturdy Dutch names—Boyce, Steenburg, Van Lear—and a lonely French Mercereau; the rest are unmixed English.

Not unnaturally you look next for an Episcopalian Church, finding none in Abingdon; Abingdon is given over to fiery Dissenters—the Old-World word comes unbidden into your mouth. But you were not so far wrong; in prosperous Vesper, to westward, every one who pretends to be any one attends services at Saint Adalbert's, a church noted for its gracious and satisfying architecture. In Vesper the name of Henry VIII is revered and his example followed.

But the inquiring mind, seeking among the living bearers of these old names, suffers check and disillusion. There are no traditions. Their title deeds trace back to Coxe's Manor, Nichols Patent, the Barton Tract, the Flint Purchase, Boston Ten Townships; but in-dwellers of the land know nothing of who or why was Coxe, or where stood his Manor House; have no memory of the Bostonians.

In Vesper there are genealogists who might tell you such things; old records that might prove them; old families, enjoying wealth and distinction without perceptible cause, with others of the ruling caste who may have some knowledge of these matters. Such grants were not uncommon in the Duke of York, his Province. In that good duke's day, and later, following the pleasant fashion set by that Pope who divided his world equally between Spain and Portugal, valleys and mountains were tossed to supple courtiers by men named Charles, James, William, or George, kings by the grace of God; the goodly land, the common wealth and birth-right of the unborn, was granted in princedom parcels to king's favorites, king's minions, to favorites of king's minions, for services often enough unspecified.

The toilers of Abingdon—of other Abingdons, perhaps—know none of these things. Winter has pushed them hard, summer been all too brief; life has been crowded with a feverish instancy of work. There is a vague memory of the Sullivan Expedition; once a year the early settlers, as a community enterprise, had brought salt from Syracuse; the forest had been rafted down the river; the rest is silence.

Perhaps this good old English stock, familiar for a thousand years with oppression and gentility, wonted to immemorial fraud, schooled by generations of cheerful teachers to speak no evil of dignities, to see everything for the best in the best of possible worlds, found no injustice in the granting of these broad manors—or, at least, no novelty worthy of mention to their sons. There is no whisper of ancient wrong; no hint or rankling of any irrevocable injustice.

Doubtless some of these land grants were made, at a later day, to soldiers of the Revolution. But the children of the Revolution maintain a not unbecoming unreticence as to all things Revolutionary; from their silence in this regard, as from the name of Manor, we may make safe inference. Doubtless many of the royalist estates were confiscated at that time. Doubtless, again, our Government, to encourage settlement, sold land in such large parcels in early days. Incurious Abingdon cares for none of these things. Singular Abingdon! And yet are these folk, indeed, so singular among citizens? So unseeing a people? Consider that, within the memory of men living, the wisdom of America has made free gift to the railroads, to encourage their building, of so much land as goes to the making of New England, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois; a notable encouragement!

History does not remark upon this little transaction, however. In some piecemeal fashion, a sentence here, a phrase elsewhere, with scores or hundreds of pages intervening, History does, indeed, make yawning allusion to some such trivial circumstance; refraining from comment in the most well-bred manner imaginable. It is only the ill-affected, the malcontents, who dwell upon such details. Is this not, indeed, a most beautiful world, and ours the land of opportunity, progress, education? Let our faces, then, be ever glad and shining. Let us tune ourselves with the Infinite; let a golden thread run through all our days; no frowns, no grouches, no scolding—no, no! No ingratitude for all the bounties of Providence. Let us, then, be up and doing.—Doing, certainly; but why not think a little too?

Why is thinking in such disfavor? Why is thinking, about subjects and things, the one crime never forgiven by respectability? We have given away our resources, what should have been our common wealth; we have squandered our land, wasted our forests. "Such trifles are not my business," interrupts History, rather feverish of manner; "my duty to record and magnify the affairs of the great."—Allow me, madam; we have given away our coal, the wealth of the past; our oil, the wealth of to-day; except we do presently think to some purpose, we shall give away our stored electricity, the wealth of the future—our water power which should, which must, remain ours and our children's. "Socialist!" shrieks History.

The youth of Abingdon speak glibly of Shepherd Kings, Constitution of Lycurgus, Thermopylae, Consul Duilius, or the Licinian Laws; the more advanced are even as far down as Elizabeth. For the rich and unmatched history of their own land, they have but a shallow patter of that; no guess at its high meaning, no hint of a possible destiny apart from glory and greed and war, a future and opportunity "too high for hate, too great for rivalry." The history of America is the story of the pioneer and the story of the immigrant. The students are taught nothing of the one or the other—except for the case of certain immigrant pioneers, enskied and sainted, who never left the hearing of the sea; a sturdy and stout-hearted folk enough, but something press-agented.

Outside of school the student hears no mention of living immigrant or pioneer save in terms of gibe and sneer and taunt. The color and high romance of his own township is a thing undreamed of, as vague and shapeless as the foundations of Enoch, the city of Cain. And for his own farmstead, though for the first time on earth a man made here a home; though valor blazed the path; though he laid the foundation of that house in hope and in love set up the gates of it, none knows the name of that man or of his bolder mate. There are no traditions—and no ballads.

A seven-mile stretch of the river follows the outlines of a sickle, or, if you are not familiar with sickles, of a handmade figure five. Abingdon lies at the sickle point, prosperous Vesper at the end of the handle; Vesper, the county seat, abode of lawyers and doctors—some bankers, too. Home also of retired business men, of retired farmers; home of old families, hereditary county officials, legislators.

Overarched with maples, the old road parallels the river bend, a mile away. The broad and fertile bottom land within the loop of this figure five is divided into three great farms—"gentlemen's estates." The gentlemen are absentees all.

A most desirable neighborhood; the only traces of democracy on the river road are the schoolhouse and the cemetery. Malvern and Brookfield were owned respectively by two generals, gallant soldiers of the Civil War, successful lawyers, since, of New York City. Stately, high-columned Colonial houses, far back from the road; the clustered tenant houses, the vast barns, long red tobacco sheds—all are eloquent of a time when lumber was the cheapest factor of living.

The one description serves for the two farms. These men had been boys together, their careers the same; they had married sisters. But the red tobacco sheds of Malvern were only three hundred feet long—this general had left a leg at Malvern Hill—while the Brookfield sheds stretched full five hundred feet. At Brookfield, too, were the great racing-stables, of fabulous acreage; disused now and falling to decay. One hundred and sixty thoroughbreds had sheltered here of old, with an army of grooms and trainers. There had been a race-track—an oval mile at first, a kite-shaped mile in later days. Year by year now sees the stables torn down and carted away for other uses, but the strong-built paddocks remain to witness the greatness of days departed.

Nearest to Vesper, on the smallest of the three farms, stood the largest of the three houses—The Meadows; better known as the Mitchell House.

McClintock, a foreigner from Philadelphia, married a Mitchell in '67. A good family, highly connected, the Mitchells; brilliant, free-handed, great travelers; something wildish, the younger men—boys will be boys.

In a silent, undemonstrative manner of his own McClintock gathered the loose money in and about Vesper; a shrewd bargainer, ungiven to merrymakings; one who knew how to keep dollars at work. It is worthy of note that no after hint of ill dealing attached to these years. In his own bleak way the man dealt justly; not without a prudent liberality as well. For debtors deserving, industrious, and honest, he observed a careful and exact kindness, passing by his dues cheerfully, to take them at a more convenient season. Where death had been, long sickness, unmerited misfortune—he did not stop there; advancing further sums for a tiding-over, after careful consideration of needs and opportunities, coupled with a reasonable expectation of repayment; cheerfully taking any security at hand, taking the security of character as cheerfully when he felt himself justified; in good time exacting his dues to the last penny—still cheerfully. Not heartless, either; in cases of extreme distress—more than once or twice—McClintock had both written off the obligation and added to it something for the day's need, in a grim but not unkindly fashion; always under seal of secrecy. No extortioner, this; a dry, passionless, pertinacious man.

McClintock bought the Mitchell House in the seventies—boys still continuing to be boyish—and there, a decade later, his wife died, childless.

McClintock disposed of his takings unobserved, holding Mitchell House only, and slipped away to New York or elsewhere. The rents of Mitchell House were absorbed by a shadowy, almost mythical agent, whose name you always forgot until you hunted up the spidery signature on the receipts given by the bank for your rent money.

Except for a curious circumstance connected with Mitchell House, McClintock had been quite forgotten of Vesper and Abingdon. The great house was much in demand as a summer residence; those old oak-walled rooms were spacious and comfortable, if not artistic; the house was admirably kept up. It was in the most desirable neighborhood; there was fishing and boating; the situation was "sightly." We borrow the last word from the hill folk, the presentee landlords; the producers, or, to put it quite bluntly, the workers.

As the years slipped by, it crept into common knowledge that not every one could obtain a lease of Mitchell House. Applicants, Vesperian or "foreigners," were kept waiting; almost as if the invisible agent were examining into their eligibility. And it began to be observed that leaseholders were invariably light, frivolous, pleasure-loving people, such as kept the big house crowded with youth and folly, to company youth of its own. Such lessees were like to make agriculture a mockery; the Mitchell Place, as a farm, became a hissing, and a proverb, and an astonishment: a circumstance so singularly at variance with remembered thrift of the reputed owner as to keep green that owner's name. Nor was that all. As youth became mature and wise, in the sad heartrending fashion youth has, or flitted to new hearths, in that other heartbreaking way of youth, it was noted that leases were not to be renewed on any terms; and the new tenants, in turn, were ever such light and unthrift folk as the old, always with tall sons and gay daughters—as if the mythical agent or his ghostly principal had set apart that old house to mirth and joy and laughter, to youth and love. It was remembered then, on certain struggling hill farms, that old McClintock had been childless; and certain hill babies were cuddled the closer for that.

Then, thirty years later, or forty—some such matter—McClintock slipped back to Vesper unheralded—very many times a millionaire; incidentally a hopeless invalid, sentenced for life to a wheeled chair; Vesper's most successful citizen.

Silent, uncomplaining, unapproachable, and grim, he kept to his rooms in the Iroquois, oldest of Vesper's highly modern hotels; or was wheeled abroad by his one attendant, who was valet, confidant, factotum, and friend—Cornelius Van Lear, withered, parchment-faced, and brown, strikingly like Rameses II as to appearance and garrulity. It was to Van Lear that Vesper owed the known history of those forty years of McClintock's. Closely questioned, the trusted confidant had once yielded to cajolery.

"We've been away," said Van Lear.

It was remarked that the inexplicable Mitchell House policy remained in force in the years since McClintock's return; witness the present incumbent, frivolous Thompson, foreigner from Buffalo—him and his house parties! It was Mitchell House still, mauger the McClintock millions and a half-century of possession. Whether this clinging to the old name was tribute to the free-handed Mitchells or evidence of fine old English firmness is a matter not yet determined.

The free-handed Mitchells themselves, as a family, were no more. They had scattered, married or died, lost their money, gone to work, or otherwise disappeared. Vesper kept knowledge of but two of them: Lawyer Oscar, solid, steady, highly respectable, already in the way of becoming Squire Mitchell, and like to better the Mitchell tradition of prosperity—a warm man, a getting-on man, not to mention that he was the older nephew and probable heir to the McClintock millions; and Oscar's cousin, Stanley, youngest nephew of the millions, who, three years ago, had defied McClintock to his face. Stan Mitchell had always been wild, even as a boy, they said; they remembered now.

It seemed that McClintock had commanded young Stan to break his engagement to that Selden girl—the schoolma'am at Brookfield, my dear—one of the hill people. There had been a terrible scene. Earl Dawson was staying at the Iroquois and his door happened to be open a little.

"Then you'll get none of my money!" said the old gentleman.

"To hell with your money!" Stan said, and slammed the door.

He was always a dreadful boy, my dear! So violent and headstrong! Always picking on my poor Johnny at school; Johnny came home once with the most dreadful bruise over his eye—Stanley's work.

So young Stan flung away to the West three years ago. The Selden girl still teaches the Brookfield District; Stan Mitchell writes to her, the mail carrier says. No-o; not so bad-looking, exactly—in that common sort of way!



CHAPTER IX

"Far be it from me to—to—"

"Cavil or carp?"

"Exactly. Thank you. Beautiful line! Quite Kipling. Far from me to cavil or carp, Tum-tee-tum-tee-didy, Or shift the shuttle from web or warp. And all for my dark-eyed lydy! Far be it from me, as above. Nevertheless—"

"Why, then, the exertion?"

"Duty. Friendship. Francis Charles Boland, you're lazy."

"Ferdie," said Francis Charles, "you are right. I am."

"Too lazy to defend yourself against the charge of being lazy?"

"Not at all. The calm repose; that sort of thing—what?"

Mr. Boland's face assumed the patient expression of one misjudged.

"Laziness!" repeated Ferdie sternly. "'Tis a vice that I abhor. Slip me a smoke."

Francis Charles fumbled in the cypress humidor at Ferdie's elbow; he leaned over the table and gently closed Ferdie's finger and thumb upon a cigarette.

"Match," sighed Ferdie.

Boland struck a match; he held the flame to the cigarette's end. Ferdie puffed. Then he eyed his friend with judicial severity.

"Abominably lazy! Every opportunity—family, education—brains, perhaps. Why don't you go to work?"

"My few and simple wants—" Boland waved his hand airily. "Besides, who am I that I should crowd to the wall some worthy and industrious person?—practically taking the bread from the chappie's mouth, you might say. No, no!" said Mr. Boland with emotion; "I may have my faults, but—"

"Why don't you go in for politics?"

"Ferdinand, little as you may deem it, there are limits."

"You have no ambition whatever?"

"By that sin fell the angels—and look at them now!"

"Why not take a whirl at law?"

Boland sat up stiffly. "Mr. Sedgwick," he observed with exceeding bitterness, "you go too far. Take back your ring! Henceforth we meet as str-r-r-rangers!"

"Ever think of writing? You do enough reading, Heaven knows."

Mr. Boland relapsed to a sagging sprawl; he adjusted his finger tips to touch with delicate nicety.

"Modesty," he said with mincing primness, "is the brightest jewel in my crown. Litter and literature are not identical, really, though the superficial observer might be misled to think so. And yet, in a higher sense, perhaps, it may almost be said, with careful limitations, that, considering certain delicate nuances of filtered thought, as it were, and making meticulous allowance for the personal equation—"

"Grisly ass! Well, then, what's the matter with the army?"

"My prudence is such," responded Mr. Boland dreamily—"in fact, my prudence is so very such, indeed—one may almost say so extremely such—not to mention the pertinent and trenchant question so well formulated by the little Peterkin—"

"Why don't you marry?"

"Ha!" said Francis Charles.

"Whachamean—'Ha'?"

"I mean what the poet meant when he spoke so feelingly of the

"———eager boys Who might have tasted girl's love and been stung."

"Didn't say it. Who?"

"Did, too! William Vaughn Moody. So I say 'Ha!' in the deepest and fullest meaning of the word; and I will so defend it with my life."

"If you were good and married once, you might not be such a fool," said Sedgwick hopefully.

"Take any form but this"—Mr. Boland inflated his chest and held himself oratorically erect—"and my firm nerves shall never tremble! I have tracked the tufted pocolunas to his lair; I have slain the eight-legged galliwampus; I have bearded the wallipaloova in his noisome den, and gazed into the glaring eyeballs of the fierce Numidian liar; and I'll try everything once—except this. But I have known too many too-charming girls too well. To love them," said Francis Charles sadly, "was a business education."

He lit a cigar, clasped his hands behind his head, tilted his chair precariously, and turned a blissful gaze to the little rift of sky beyond the crowding maples.

Mr. Boland was neither tall nor short; neither broad nor slender; neither old nor young. He wore a thick mop of brown hair, tinged with chestnut in the sun. His forehead was broad and high and white and shapely. His eyes were deep-set and wide apart, very innocent, very large, and very brown, fringed with long lashes that any girl might envy. There the fine chiseling ceased. Ensued a nose bold and broad, freckled and inclined to puggishness; a wide and generous mouth, quirky as to the corners of it; high cheek bones; and a square, freckled jaw—all these ill-assorted features poised on a strong and muscular neck.

Sedgwick, himself small and dark and wiry, regarded Mr. Boland with a scorning and deprecatory—but with private approval.

"You're getting on, you know. You're thirty—past. I warn you."

"Ha!" said Francis Charles again.

Sedgwick raised his voice appealingly.

"Hi, Thompson! Here a minute! Shouldn't Francis Charles marry?"

"Ab-so-lute-ly!" boomed a voice within.

The two young men, it should be said, sat on the broad porch of Mitchell House. The booming voice came from the library.

"Mustn't Francis Charles go to work?"

In the library a chair overturned with a crash. A startled silence; then the sound of swift feet. Thompson came through the open French window; a short man, with a long shrewd face and a frosted poll. Feigned anxiety sat on his brow; he planted his feet firmly and wide apart, and twinkled down at his young guests.

"Pardon me, Mr. Sedgwick—I fear I did not catch your words correctly. You were saying—?"

Francis Charles brought his chair to level and spoke with great feeling:

"As our host, to whom our bright young lives have been entrusted for a time—standing to us, as you do, almost as a locoed parent—I put it to you—"

"Shut up!" roared Ferdie. "Thompson, you see this—this object? You hear it? Mustn't it go to work?"

"Ab-so-lutissimusly!"

"I protest against this outrage," said Francis Charles. "Thompson, you're beastly sober. I appeal to your better self. I am a philosopher. Sitting under your hospitable rooftree, I render you a greater service by my calm and dispassionate insight than I could possibly do by any ill-judged activity. Undisturbed and undistracted by greed, envy, ambition, or desire, I see things in their true proportion. A dreamy spectator of the world's turmoil, I do not enter into the hectic hurly-burly of life; I merely withhold my approval from cant, shams, prejudice, formulae, hypocrisy, and lies. Such is the priceless service of the philosopher."

"Philosopher, my foot!" jeered Ferdie. "You're a brow! A solemn and sanctimonious brow is bad enough, but a sprightly and godless brow is positive-itutely the limit!"

"That's absurd, you know," objected Francis Charles. "No man is really irreligious. Whether we make broad the phylactery or merely our minds, we are all alike at heart. The first waking thought is invariably, What of the day? It is a prayer—unconscious, unspoken, and sincere. We are all sun worshipers; and when we meet we invoke the sky—a good day to you; a good night to you. It is a highly significant fact that all conversation begins with the weather. The weather is the most important fact in any one day, and, therefore, the most important fact in the sum of our days. We recognize this truth in our greetings; we propitiate the dim and nameless gods of storm and sky; we reverence their might, their paths above our knowing. Nor is this all. A fine day; a bad day—with the careless phrases we assent to such tremendous and inevitable implications: the helplessness of humanity, the brotherhood of man, equality, democracy. For what king or kaiser, against the implacable wind—"

Ferdie rose and pawed at his ears with both hands.

"For the love of the merciful angels! Can the drivel and cut the drool!"

"Those are very good words, Sedgwick," said Mr. Thompson approvingly. "The word I had on my tongue was—balderdash. But your thought was happier. Balderdash is a vague and shapeless term. It conjures up no definite vision. But drivel and drool—very excellent words."

Mr. Thompson took a cigar and seated himself, expectant and happy.

"Boland, what did you come here for, anyhow?" demanded Ferdie explosively. "Do you play tennis? Do you squire the girls? Do you take a hand at bridge? Do you fish? Row? Swim? Motor? Golf? Booze? Not you! Might as well have stayed in New York. Two weeks now you have perched oh a porch—perched and sat, and nothing more. Dawdle and dream and foozle over your musty old books. Yah! Highbrow!"

"Little do you wot; but I do more—ah, far more!—than perching on this porch."

"What do you do? Mope and mowl? If so, mowl for us. I never saw anybody mowl. Or does one hear people when they mowl?"

"Naturally it wouldn't occur to you—but I think. About things. Mesopotamia. The spring-time of the world. Ur of the Chaldees. Melchisedec. Arabia Felix. The Simple Life; and Why Men Leave Home."

"No go, Boland, old socks!" said Thompson. "Our young friend is right, you know. You are not practical. You are booky. You are a dreamer. Get into the game. Get busy! Get into business. Get a wad. Get! Found an estate. Be somebody!"

"As for me, I go for a stroll. You give little Frankie a pain in his feelings! For a crooked tuppence I'd get somebody to wire me to come to New York at once.—Uttering these intrepid words the brave youth rose gracefully and, without a glance at his detractors, sauntered nonchalantly to the gate.—Unless, of course, you meant it for my good?" He bent his brows inquiringly.

"We meant it—" said Ferdie, and paused.

"—for your good," said Thompson.

"Oh, well, if you meant it for my good!" said Boland graciously. "All the same, if I ever decide to 'be somebody,' I'm going to be Francis Charles Boland, and not a dismal imitation of a copy of some celebrated poseur—I'll tell you those! Speaking as a man of liberal—or lax—morality, you surprise me. You are godly and cleanly men; yet, when you saw in me a gem of purest ray serene, did you appeal to my better nature? Nary! In a wild and topsy-turvy world, did you implore me to devote my splendid and unwasted energies in the service of Good, with a capital G? Nix! You appealed to ambition, egotism, and greed.... Fie! A fie upon each of you!"

"Don't do that! Have mercy! We appeal to your better nature. We repent."

"All the same, I am going for my stroll, rejoined the youth, striving to repress his righteous indignation out of consideration for his humiliated companions, who now—alas, too late!—saw their conduct in its true light. For, he continued, with a flashing look from his intelligent eyes, I desire no pedestal; I am not avaricious. Be mine the short and simple flannels of the poor."

* * * * *

An hour later Francis Charles paused in his strolling, cap in hand, and turned back with Mary Selden.

"How fortunate!" he said.

"Isn't it?" said Miss Selden. "Odd, too, considering that I take this road home every evening after school is out. And when we reflect that you chanced this way last Thursday at half-past four—and again on Friday—it amounts to a coincidence."

"Direction of the subconscious mind," explained Francis Charles, unabashed. "Profound meditation—thirst for knowledge. What more natural than that my heedless foot should stray, instinctively as it were, toward the—the—"

"—old oaken schoolhouse that stood in a swamp. It is a shame, of the burning variety, that a State as wealthy as New York doesn't and won't provide country schools with playgrounds big enough for anything but tiddledy-winks!" declared Miss Selden. Her fine firm lip curled. Then she turned her clear gray eyes upon Mr. Boland. "Excuse me for interrupting you, please."

"Don't mention it! People always have to interrupt me when they want to say anything. And now may I put a question or two? About—geography—history—that sort of thing?"

The eyes further considered Mr. Boland.

"You are not very complimentary to Mr. Thompson's house party, I think," said Mary in a cool, little, matter-of-fact voice.

Altogether a cool-headed and practical young lady, this midget schoolma'am, with her uncompromising directness of speech and her clear eyes—a merry, mirthful, frank, dainty, altogether delightful small person.

Francis Charles stole an appreciative glance at the trim and jaunty figure beside him and answered evasively:

"It was like this, you know: Was reading Mark Twain's 'Life on the Mississippi.' On the first page he observes of that river that it draws its water supply from twenty-eight States, all the way from Delaware to Idaho. I don't just see it. Delaware, you know—that's pretty steep!"

"If it were not for his reputation I should suspect Mr. Clemens of levity," said Mary. "Could it have been a slip?"

"No slip. It's repeated. At the end of the second chapter he says this—I think I have it nearly word for word: 'At the meeting of the waters from Delaware and from Itasca, and from the mountain ranges close upon the Pacific—' Now what did he mean by making this very extraordinary statement twice? Is there a catch about it? Canals, or something?"

"I think, perhaps," said Mary, "he meant to poke fun at our habit of reading without attention and of accepting statement as proof."

"That's it, likely. But maybe there's a joker about canals. Wasn't there a Baltimore and Ohio Canal? But again, if so, how did water from Delaware get to Baltimore? Anyhow, that's how it all began—studying about canals. For, how about this dry canal along here? It runs forty miles that I know of—I've seen that much of it, driving Thompson's car. It must have cost a nice bunch of money. Who built it? When did who build it? What did it cost? Where did it begin? Where did it start to? Was it ever finished? Was it ever used? What was the name of it? Nobody seems to know."

"I can't answer one of those questions, Mr. Boland."

"And you a schoolmistress! Come now! I'll give you one more chance. What are the principal exports of Abingdon?"

"That's easy. Let me see: potatoes, milk, eggs, butter, cheese. And hay, lumber, lath and bark—chickens and—and apples, apple cider—rye, buckwheat, buckwheat flour, maple sirup; pork and veal and beef; and—and that's all, I guess."

"Wrong! I'll mark you fifty per cent. You've omitted the most important item. Abingdon—and every country town, I suppose—ships off her young people—to New York; to the factories; a few to the West. That is why Abingdon is the saddest place I've ever seen. Every farmhouse holds a tragedy. The young folk—

"They are all gone away; The house is shut and still. There is nothing more to say."

Mary Selden stopped; she looked up at her companion thoughtfully. Seashell colors ebbed from her face and left it almost pale.

"Thank you for reminding me," she said. "There is another bit of information I think you should have. You'll probably think me bold, forward, and the rest of it; I can't help that; you need the knowledge."

Francis Charles groaned.

"For my good, of course. Funny how anything that's good for us is always disagreeable. Well, let's have it!"

"It may not be of the slightest consequence to you," began Mary, slightly confused. "And perhaps you know all about it—any old gossip could tell you. It's a wonder if they haven't; you've been here two weeks."

Boland made a wry face.

"I see! Exports?"

Mary nodded, and her brave eyes drooped a little.

"Abingdon's finest export—in my opinion, at least—went to Arizona. And—and he's in trouble, Mr. Boland; else I might not have told you this. But it seemed so horrid of me—when he's in such dreadful trouble. So, now you know."

"Arizona?" said Boland. "Why, there's where—Excuse me; I didn't mean to pry."

"Yes, Stanley Mitchell. Only that you stick in your shell, like a turtle, you'd have heard before now that we were engaged. Are engaged. And you mustn't say a word. No one knows about the trouble—not even his uncle. I've trusted you, Mr. Boland."

"See here, Miss Selden—I'm really not a bad sort. If I can be of any use—here am I. And I lived in the Southwest four years, too—West Texas and New Mexico. Best time I ever had! So I wouldn't be absolutely helpless out there. And I'm my own man—foot-loose. So, if you can use me—for this thing seems to be serious—"

"Serious!" said Mary. "Serious! I can't tell you now. I shouldn't have told you even this much. Go now, Mr. Boland. And if we—if I see where I can use you—that was your word—I'll use you. But you are to keep away from me unless I send for you. Suppose Stan heard now what some gossip or other might very well write to him—that 'Mary Selden walked home every night with a fascinating Francis Charles Boland'?"

"Tell him about me, yourself—touching lightly on my fascinations," advised Boland. "And tell him why you tell him. Plain speaking is always the best way."

"It is," said Mary. "I'll do that very thing this night. I think I like you, Mr. Boland. Thank you—and good-bye!"

"Good-bye!" said Boland, touching her hand.

He looked after her as she went.

"Plucky little devil!" he said. "Level and straight and square. Some girl!"



CHAPTER X

Mr. Oscar Mitchell, attorney and counselor at law, sauntered down River Street, with the cheerful and optimistic poise of one who has lunched well. A well-set-up man, a well-groomed man, as-it-is-done; plainly worshipful; worthy the highest degree of that most irregular of adjectives, respectable; comparative, smart; superlative, correct.

Mr. Mitchell was correct; habited after the true Polonian precept; invisible, every buckle, snap, clasp, strap, wheel, axle, wedge, pulley, lever, and every other mechanical device known to science, was in place and of the best. As to adornment, all in good taste—scarfpin, an unpretentious pearl in platinum; garnet links, severely plain and quiet; an unobtrusive watch-chain; one ring, a small emerald; no earrings.

Mr. Mitchell's face was well shaped, not quite plump or pink, with the unlined curves, the smooth clear skin, and the rosy glow that comes from health and virtue, or from good living and massage. Despite fifty years, or near it, the flax-smooth hair held no glint of gray; his eyes, blue and big and wide, were sharp and bright, calm, confident, almost candid—not quite the last, because of a roving trick of clandestine observation; his mouth, where it might or should have curved—must once have curved in boyhood—was set and guarded, even in skillful smilings, by a long censorship of undesirable facts, material or otherwise to any possible issue.

Mr. Mitchell's whole bearing was confident and assured; his step, for all those fifty afore-said years, was light and elastic, even in sauntering; he took the office stairs with the inimitable sprightly gallop of the town-bred.

Man is a quadruped who has learned to use his front legs for other things than walking. Some hold that he has learned to use his head. But there are three things man cannot do, and four which he cannot compass: to see, to think, to judge, and to act—to see the obvious; to think upon the thing seen; to judge between our own resultant and conflicting thoughts, with no furtive finger of desire to tip the balance; and to act upon that judgment without flinching. We fear the final and irretrievable calamity: we fear to make ourselves conspicuous, we conform to standard, we bear ourselves meekly in that station whereunto it hath pleased Heaven to call us; the herd instinct survives four-footedness. For, we note the strange but not the familiar; our thinking is to right reason what peat is to coal; the outcry of the living and the dead perverts judgment, closes the ear to proof; and our wisest fear the scorn of fools. So we walk cramped and strangely under the tragic tyranny of reiteration: whatever is right; whatever is repeated often enough is true; and logic is a device for evading the self-evident. Moreover, Carthage should be destroyed.

Such sage reflections present themselves automatically, contrasting the blithesome knee action of prosperous Mr. Mitchell with the stiffened joints of other men who had climbed those hard stairs on occasion with shambling step, bent backs and sagging shoulders; with faces lined and interlined; with eyes dulled and dim, and sunken cheeks; with hands misshapen, knotted and bent by toil: if image indeed of God, strangely distorted—or a strange God.

Consider now, in a world yielding enough and to spare for all, the endless succession of wise men, from the Contributing Editor of Proverbs unto this day, who have hymned the praise of diligence and docility, the scorn of sloth. Yet not one sage of the bountiful bunch has ever ventured to denounce the twin vices of industry and obedience. True, there is the story of blind Samson at the mill; perhaps a parable.

Underfed and overworked for generations, starved from birth, starved before birth, we drive and harry and crush them, the weakling and his weaker sons; we exploit them, gull them, poison them, lie to them, filch from them. We crowd them into our money mills; we deny them youth, we deny them rest, we deny them opportunity, we deny them hope, or any hope of hope; and we provide for age—the poorhouse. So that charity is become of all words the most feared, most hated, most loathed and loathsome; worse than crime or shame or death. We have left them from the work of their hands enough, scantly enough, to keep breath within their stunted bodies. "All the traffic can bear!"—a brazen rule. Of such sage policy the result can be seen in the wizened and undersized submerged of London; of nearer than London. Man, by not taking thought, has taken a cubit from his stature.

Meantime we prate comfortable blasphemies, scientific or other; natural selection or the inscrutable decrees of God. Whereas this was manifestly a Hobson's selection, most unnatural and forced, to choose want of all that makes life sweet and dear; to choose gaunt babes, with pinched and livid lips—unlovely, not unloved; and these iniquitous decrees are most scrutable, are surely of man's devising and not of God's. Or we invent a fire-new science, known as Eugenics, to treat the disease by new naming of symptoms: and prattle of the well born, when we mean well fed; or the degenerate, when we might more truly say the disinherited.

It is even held by certain poltroons that families have been started gutterward, of late centuries, when a father has been gloriously slain in the wars of the useless great. That such a circumstance, however glorious, may have been rather disadvantageous than otherwise to children thereby sent out into the world at six or sixteen years, lucky to become ditch-diggers or tip-takers. That some proportion of them do become beggars, thieves, paupers, sharpers, other things quite unfit for the ear of the young person—a disconcerting consideration; such ears cannot be too carefully guarded. That, though the occupations named are entirely normal to all well-ordered states, descendants of persons in those occupations tend to become "subnormal"—so runs the cant of it—something handicapped by that haphazard bullet of a lifetime since, fired to advance the glorious cause of—foreign commerce, or the like.

* * * * *

Mr. Mitchell occupied five rooms lined with law books and musty with the smell of leather. These rooms ranged end to end, each with a door that opened upon a dark hallway; a waiting-room in front, the private office at the rear, to which no client was ever admitted directly. Depressed by delay, subdued by an overflow of thick volumes, when he reaches a suitable dejection he is tip-toed through dismal antechambers of wisdom, appalled by tall bookstacks, ushered into the leather-chaired office, and there further crushed by long shelves of dingy tin boxes, each box crowded with weighty secrets and shelved papers of fabulous moment and urgency; the least paper of the smallest box more important—the unfortunate client is clear on that point—than any contemptible need of his own. Cowed and chastened, he is now ready to pay a fee suitable to the mind that has absorbed all the wisdom of those many bookshelves; or meekly to accept as justice any absurdity or monstrosity of the law.

Mr. Mitchell was greeted by a slim, swarthy, black-eyed, elderly person of twenty-five or thirty, with a crooked nose and a crooked mind, half clerk and half familiar spirit—Mr. Joseph Pelman, to wit; who appeared perpetually on the point of choking himself by suppressed chucklings at his principal's cleverness and the simplicity of dupes.

"Well, Joe?"

"Two to see you, sir," said Joe, his face lit up with sprightly malice. "On the same lay. That Watkins farm of yours. I got it out of 'em. Ho ho! I kept 'em in different rooms. I hunted up their records in your record books. Doomsday Books, I call 'em. Ho ho!"

Mr. Mitchell selected a cigar, lit it, puffed it, and fixed his eye on his demon clerk.

"Now then," he said sharply, "let's have it!"

The demon pounced on a Brobdingnagian volume upon the desk and worried it open at a marker. It had been meant for a ledger, that huge volume; the gray cloth covers bore the legend "N to Z." Ledger it was, of a grim sort, with sinister entries of forgotten sins, the itemized strength or weakness of a thousand men. The confidential clerk ran a long, confidential finger along the spidery copperplate index of the W's: "Wakelin, Walcott, Walker, Wallace, Walsh, Walters; Earl, John, Peter, Ray, Rex, Roy—Samuel—page 1124." His nimble hands flew at the pages like a dog at a woodchuck hole.

"Here't is—'Walters, Samuel: born '69, son of John Walters, Holland Hill; religion—politics—um-um—bad habits, none; two years Vesper Academy; three years Dennison shoe factories; married 1896—one child, b. 1899. Bought Travis Farm 1898, paying half down; paid balance out in five years; dairy, fifteen cows; forehanded, thrifty. Humph! Good pay, I guess."

He cocked his head to one side and eyed his employer, fingering a wisp of black silk on his upper lip.

"And the other?"

The second volume was spread open upon the desk. Clerk Pelman flung himself upon it with savage fury.

"Bowen, Chauncey, son William Bowen, born 1872—um—um—married Louise Hill 92—um—divorced '96; married Laura Wing '96—see Lottie Hall. Ran hotel at Larren '95 to '97; sheriff's sale '97; worked Bowen Farm '97 to 1912; bought Eagle Hotel, Vesper, after death of William Bowen, 1900. Traded Eagle Hotel for Griffin Farm, 1912; sold Griffin Farm, 1914; clerk Simon's hardware store, Emmonsville, Pennsylvania. Heavy drinker, though seldom actually drunk; suspected of some share in the Powers affair, or some knowledge, at least; poker fiend. Bank note protested and paid by endorser 1897, and again in 1902; has since repaid endorsers. See Larren Hotel, Eagle Hotel."

"Show him in," said Mitchell.

"Walters?" The impish clerk cocked his head on one side again and gulped down a chuckle at his own wit.

"Bowen, fool! Jennie Page, his mother's sister, died last week and left him a legacy—twelve hundred dollars. I'll have that out of him, or most of it, as a first payment."

The clerk turned, his mouth twisted awry to a malicious grin.

"Trust you!" he chuckled admiringly, and laid a confidential finger beside his crooked nose. "Ho ho! This is the third time you've sold the Watkins Farm; and it won't be the last! Oh, you're a rare one, you are! Four farms you've got, and the way you got 'em ho! You go Old Benjamin one better, you do.

"Who so by the plow would thrive Himself must neither hold nor drive.

"A regular hard driver, you are!"

"Some fine day," answered Mitchell composedly, "you will exhaust my patience and I shall have to let you be hanged!"

"No fear!" rejoined the devil clerk, amiably. "I'm too useful. I do your dirty work for you and leave you always with clean hands to show. Who stirs up damage suits? Joe. Who digs up the willing witness? J. Pelman. Who finds skeletons in respectable closets? Joey. Who is the go-between? Joseph. I'm trusty too, because I dare not be otherwise. And because I like the work. I like to see you skin 'em, I do. Fools! And because you give me a fair share of the plunder. Princely, I call it—and wise. You be advised, Lawyer Mitchell, and always give me my fair share. Hang Joey? Oh, no! Never do! No fear!" A spasm of chuckles cut him short.

"Go on, fool, and bring Bowen in. Then tell Walters the farm is already sold."

The door closed behind the useful Joseph, and immediately popped open again in the most startling fashion.

"No; nor that, either," said Joseph.

He closed the door softly and leaned against it, cocking his head on one side with an evil smile.

His employer glanced at him with uninquiring eyes.

"You won't ask what, hey? No? But I'll tell you what you were thinking of: Dropping me off the bridge. Upsetting the boat. The like of that. Can't have it. I can't afford it. You're too liberal. Why, I wouldn't crawl under your car to repair it—or go hunting with you—not if it was ever so!"

"I really believe," said Mr. Mitchell with surprised eyebrows, "that you are keeping me waiting!"

"That is why I never throw out hints about a future partnership," continued the confidential man, undaunted. "You are such a liberal paymaster. Lord love you, sir, I don't want any partnership! This suits me. You furnish the brains and the respectability; I take the risk, and I get my fair share. Then, if I should ever get caught, you are unsmirched; you can keep on making money. And you'll keep on giving me my share. Oh, yes; you will! You've such a good heart, Mr. Oscar! I know you. You wouldn't want old Joey hanged! Not you! Oh, no!"



CHAPTER XI

A stranger came to Abingdon by the morning train. Because of a wide-brimmed gray hat, which he wore pushed well back, to testify against burning suns elsewhere—where such hats must be pulled well down, of necessity—a few Abingdonians, in passing, gave the foreigner the tribute of a backward glance. A few only; Abingdon has scant time for curiosity. Abingdon works hard for a living, like Saturday's child, three hundred and sixty-five days a year; except every fourth year.

Aside from the hat, the foreigner might have been, for apparel, a thrifty farmer on a trip to his market town. He wore a good ready-made suit, a soft white shirt with a soft collar, and a black tie, shot with red. But an observer would have seen that this was no care-lined farmer face; that, though the man himself was small, his feet were disproportionately and absurdly small; that his toes pointed forward as he walked; and detraction might have called him bow-legged. This was Mr. Peter Johnson.

Mr. Johnson took breakfast at the Abingdon Arms. He expressed to the landlord of that hostelry a civil surprise and gratification at the volume of Abingdon's business, evinced by a steadily swelling current of early morning wagons, laden with produce, on their way to the station, or, by the river road, to the factory towns near by; was assured that he should come in the potato-hauling season if he thought that was busy; parried a few polite questions; and asked the way to the Selden Farm.

He stayed at the Selden Farm that day and that night. Afternoon of the next day found him in Lawyer Mitchell's waiting-room, at Vesper, immediate successor of Mr. Chauncey Bowen, then engaged in Lawyer Mitchell's office on the purchase of the Watkins Farm; and he was presently ushered into the presence of Mr. Mitchell by the demon clerk.

Mr. Mitchell greeted him affably.

"Good-day, sir. What can I do for you to-day?"

"Mr. Oscar Mitchell, is it?"

"The same, and happy to serve you."

"Got a letter for you from your cousin, Stan. My name's Johnson."

Mitchell extended his hand, gave Pete a grip of warm welcome.

"I am delighted to see you, Mr. Johnson. Take a chair—this big one is the most comfortable. And how is Stanley? A good boy; I am very fond of him. But, to be honest about it, he is a wretched correspondent. I have not heard from him since Christmas, and then barely a line—the compliments of the season. What is he doing with himself? Does he prosper? And why did he not come himself?"

"As far as making money is concerned, he stands to make more than he'll ever need, as you'll see when you read his letter," said Pete. "Otherwise he's only just tol'able. Fact is, he's confined to his room. That's why I come to do this business for him."

"Stanley sick? Dear, dear! What is it? Nothing serious, I hope!"

"Why, no-o—not to say sick, exactly. He just can't seem to get out o' doors very handy. He's sorter on a diet, you might say."

"Too bad; too bad! He should have written his friends about it. None of us knew a word of it. I'll write to him to-night and give him a good scolding."

"Aw, don't ye do that!" said Pete, twisting his hat in embarrassment. "I don't want he should know I told you. He's—he's kind of sensitive about it. He wouldn't want it mentioned to anybody."

"It's not his lungs, I hope?"

"Naw! No thin' like that. I reckon what's ailin' him is mostly stayin' too long in one place. Nothin' serious. Don't ye worry one mite about him. Change of scene is what he needs more than anything else—and horseback ridin'. I'll yank him out of that soon as I get back. And now suppose you read his letter. It's mighty important to us. I forgot to tell you me and, Stan, is pardners. And I'm free to say I'm anxious to see how you take to his proposition."

"If you will excuse me, then?"

Mitchell seated himself, opened the letter, and ran over it. It was brief. Refolding it, the lawyer laid it on the table before him, tapped it, and considered Mr. Johnson with regarding eyes. When he spoke his voice was more friendly than ever.

"Stanley tells me here that you two have found a very rich mine."

"Mr. Mitchell," said Pete, leaning forward in his eagerness, "I reckon that mine of ours is just about the richest strike ever found in Arizona! Of course it ain't rightly a mine—it's only where a mine is goin' to be. Just a claim. There's nothin' done to it yet. But it's sure goin' to be a crackajack. There's a whole solid mountain of high-grade copper."

"Stanley says he wants me to finance it. He offers to refund all expenses if the mine—if the claim"—Mitchell smiled cordially as he made the correction—"does not prove all he represents."

"Well, that ought to make you safe. Stan's got a right smart of property out there. I don't know how he's fixed back here. Mr. Mitchell, if you don't look into this, you'll be missin' the chance of your life."

"But if the claim is so rich, why do you need money?"

"You don't understand. This copper is in the roughest part of an awful rough mountain—right on top," said Pete, most untruthfully. "That's why nobody ain't ever found it before—because it is so rough. It'll cost a heap of money just to build a wagon road up to it—as much as five or six thousand dollars, maybe. Stan and me can't handle it alone. We got to take some one in, and we gave you the first show. And I wish," said Pete nervously, "that you could see your way to come in with us and go right back with me, at once. We're scared somebody else might find it and make a heap of trouble. There's some mighty mean men out there."

"Have a cigar?" said the lawyer, opening a desk drawer.

He held a match for his visitor and observed, with satisfaction, that Pete's hand shook. Plainly here was a simple-minded person who would be as wax in his skillful hands.

Mitchell smoked for a little while in thoughtful silence. Then, with his best straightforward look, he turned and faced Pete across the table.

"I will be plain with you, Mr. Johnson. This is a most unusual adventure for me. I am a man who rather prides himself that he makes no investments that are not conservative. But Stan is my cousin, and he has always been the soul of honor. His word is good with me. I may even make bold to say that you, yourself, have impressed me favorably. In short, you may consider me committed to a thorough investigation of your claim. After that, we shall see."

"You'll never regret it," said Pete. "Shake!"

"I suppose you are not commissioned to make any definite proposal as to terms, in case the investigation terminates as favorably as you anticipate? At any rate, this is an early day to speak of final adjustments."

"No," said Pete, "I ain't. You'll have to settle that with Stan. Probably you'll want to sign contracts and things. I don't know nothin' about law. But there's plenty for all. I'm sure of one thing—you'll be glad to throw in with us on 'most any terms once you see that copper, and have a lot of assays made and get your expert's report on it."

"I hope so, I am sure. Stanley seems very confident. But I fear I shall have to disappoint you in one particular: I can hardly leave my business here at loose ends and go back with you at once, as, I gather, is your desire."

Pete's face fell.

"How long will it take you?"

"Let me consider. I shall have to arrange for other lawyers to appear for me in cases now pending, which will imply lengthy consultations and crowded days. It will be very inconvenient and may not have the happiest results. But I will do the best I can to meet your wishes, and will stretch a point in your favor, hoping it may be remembered when we come to discuss final terms with each other. Shall we say a week?" He tapped his knuckles with the folded letter and added carelessly: "And, of course, I shall have to pack, and all that. You must advise me as to suitable clothing for roughing it. How far is your mine from the railroad?"

"Oh, not far. About forty mile. Yes, I guess I can wait a week. I stand the hotel grub pretty well."

"Where are you staying, Mr. Johnson?"

"The Algonquin. Pretty nifty."

"Good house. And how many days is it by rail to—Bless my soul, Mr. Johnson—here am I, upsetting my staid life, deserting my business on what may very well prove, after all, but a wild-goose chase! And I do not know to what place in Arizona we are bound, even as a starting-point and base of supplies, much less where your mine is! And I don't suppose there's a map of Arizona in town."

"Oh, I'll make you a map," said Pete. "Cobre—that's Mexican for copper—is where we'll make our headquarters. You give me some paper and I'll make you a map mighty quick."

Pete made a sketchy but fairly accurate map of Southern Arizona, with the main lines of railroad and the branches.

"Here's Silverbell, at the end of this little spur of railroad. Now give me that other sheet of paper and I'll show you where the mine is, and the country round Cobre."

Wetting his pencil, working with slow and painstaking effort, making slight erasures and corrections with loving care, poor, trustful, unsuspecting Pete mapped out, with true creative joy, a district that never was on land or sea, accompanying each stroke of his handiwork with verbal comments, explaining each original mountain chain or newly invented valley with a wealth of descriptive detail that would have amazed Muenchausen.

Mitchell laughed in his heart to see how readily the simple-minded mountaineer became his dupe and tool, and watched, with a covert sneer, as Pete joyously contrived his own downfall and undoing.

"I have many questions to ask about your mine—I believe I had almost said our mine." The lawyer smiled cordially. "To begin with, how about water and fuel?"

"Lots of it. A cedar brake, checker-boarded all along the mountain. There's where it gets the name, Ajedrez Mountain—Chess Mountain; kind of laid out in squares that way. Good enough for mine timbers, too. Big spring—big enough so you might almost call it a creek—right close by. It's almost too good to be true—couldn't be handier if I'd dreamed it! But," he added with regretful conscientiousness, "the water's pretty hard, I'm sorry to say. Most generally is, around copper that way. And it'll have to be pumped uphill to the mine. Too bad the spring couldn't have been above the mine, so it could have been piped down."

Prompted by more questions he plunged into a glowing description of Ajedrez Mountain; the marvelous scope of country to be seen from the summit; the beauty of its steep and precipitous canons; the Indian pottery; the mysterious deposit of oyster shells, high on the mountain-side, proving conclusively that Ajedrez Mountain had risen from the depths of some prehistoric sea; ending with a vivid description of the obstacles to be surmounted by each of the alternate projects for the wagon road up to the mine, with estimates of comparative cost.

At length it drew on to the hour for Mitchell's dinner and Pete's supper, and they parted with many expressions of elation and good-will.

From his window in the Algonquin, Pete Johnson watched Mitchell picking his way across to the Iroquois House, and smiled grimly.

"There," he confided to his pipe—"there goes a man hotfoot to dig his own grave with his own tongue! The Selden kid has done told Uncle McClintock about Stan being in jail. She told him Stan hadn't written to Cousin Oscar about no jail, and that I wasn't to tell him either. Now goes Cousin Oscar on a beeline to tell Uncle how dreadful Stanley has went and disgraced the family; and Uncle will want to know how he heard of it. 'Why,' says Oscar, 'an old ignoramus from Arizona, named Johnson—friend of Stanley's—he told me about it. He came up here to get me to help Stanley out; wanted me to go out and be his lawyer!'

"And, right there, down goes Cousin Oscar's meat-house! He'll never touch a penny of Uncle's money. Selden, she says Uncle Mac was all for blowing him up sky-high; but she made him promise not to, so as not to queer my game. If I get Oscar Mitchell out to the desert, I'll almost persuade him to be a Christian.... She's got Old McClintock on the run, Mary Selden has!

"Shucks! The minute I heard about the millionaire uncle, I knowed where Stan's trouble began. I wonder what makes Stan such a fool! He might 'a' knowed!... This Oscar person is pretty soft.... Mighty nice kid, little Selden is! Smart too. She's some schemer!... Too smart for Oscar!... Different complected, and all that; but her ways—she sort of puts me in mind of Miss Sally."



CHAPTER XII

Mr. Oscar Mitchell was a bachelor, though not precisely lorn. He maintained an elm-shaded residence on Front Street, presided over by an ancient housekeeper, of certain and gusty disposition, who had guided his first toddling steps and grieved with him for childhood's insupportable wrongs, and whose vinegarish disapprovals were still feared by Mitchell; it was for her praise or blame that his overt walk and conversation were austere and godly, his less laudable activities so mole-like.

After dinner Mr. Mitchell slipped into a smoking jacket with a violent velvet lining and sat in his den—a den bedecorated after the manner known to the muddle-minded as artistic, but more aptly described by Sir Anthony Gloster as "beastly." To this den came now the sprightly clerk, summoned by telephone.

"Sit down, Pelman. I sent for you because I desire your opinion and cooperation upon a matter of the first importance," said the lawyer, using his most gracious manner.

Mr. Joseph Pelman, pricking up his ears at the smooth conciliation of eye and voice, warily circled the room, holding Mitchell's eyes as he went, selected a corner chair for obvious strategic reasons, pushed it against the wall, tapped that wall apprehensively with a backward-reaching hand, seated himself stiffly upon the extreme edge of the chair, and faced his principal, bolt upright and bristling with deliberate insolence.

"If it is murder I want a third," he remarked.

The lawyer gloomed upon this frowardness.

"That is a poor way to greet an opportunity to make your fortune once and for all," he said. "I have something on hand now, which, if we can swing it—"

"One-third," said the clerk inflexibly.

Mitchell controlled himself with a visible effort. He swallowed hard and began again:

"If we can carry out my plan successfully—and it seems to be safe, and certain, and almost free from risk—there will be no necessity hereafter for any of us to engage in any crooked dealings whatever. Indeed, to take up cleanly ways would be the part of wisdom. Or, young as you are, you will be able to retire, if you prefer, sure of every gratification that money can buy."

"Necessity doesn't make me a crook. I'm crooked by nature. I like crookedness," said Pelman. "That's why I'm with you."

"Now, Joey, don't talk—"

"Don't you 'Joey' me!" exploded the demon clerk. "It was 'fool' this afternoon. I'm Pelman when there's any nerve needed for your schemes; but when you smile at me and call me Joey, what I say is—one-third!"

"You devil! I ought to wring your neck!"

"Try it! I'll stab your black heart with a corkscrew! I've studied it all out, and I've carried a corkscrew on purpose ever since I've known you. Thirty-three and one-third per cent. Three-ninths. Proceed!"

Mitchell paced the floor for a few furious seconds before he began again.

"You remember Mayer Zurich, whom we helped through that fake bankruptcy at Syracuse?"

"Three-ninths?"

"Yes, damn you!"

Joey settled back in his chair, crossed his knees comfortably, screwed his face to round-eyed innocence, and gave a dainty caress to the thin silky line of black on his upper lip.

"You may go on, Oscar," he drawled patronizingly.

After another angry turn, Mitchell resumed with forced composure:

"Zurich is now a fixture in Cobre, Arizona, where my Cousin Stanley lives. I had a letter from him a week ago and he tells me—this is in strict confidence, mind you—that poor Stanley is in jail."

Joey interrupted him by a gentle waving of a deprecatory hand.

"Save your breath, Oscar dear, and pass on to the main proposition. Now that we are partners, in manner of speaking, since your generous concession of a few minutes past—about the thirds—I must be very considerate of you."

As if to mark the new dignity, the junior partner dropped the crude and boisterous phrases that had hitherto marked his converse. Mitchell recognized the subtle significance of this change by an angry gesture.

"Since our interests are now one," continued the new member suavely, "propriety seems to demand that I should tell you the Mitchell-Zurich affair has no secrets from me. If young Stanley is in prison, it is because you put him there!"

"What!"

"Yes," said Joey with a complacent stroke at his upper lip. "I have duplicate keys to all your dispatch boxes and filing cabinets."

"You fiend!"

"I wished to protect you against any temptation toward ingratitude," explained Joey. "I have been, on the whole, much entertained by your correspondence. There was much chaff—that was to be expected. But there was also some precious grain which I have garnered with care. For instance, I have copies of all Zurich's letters to you. You have been endeavoring to ruin your cousin, fearing that McClintock might relent and remember Stanley in his will; you have succeeded at last. Whatever new villainy you have to propose, it now should be easier to name it, since you are relieved from the necessity of beating round the bush.—You were saying—?"

"Stanley has found a mine, a copper deposit of fabulous richness; so he writes, and so Zurich assures me. Zurich has had a sample of it assayed; he does not know where the deposit is located, but hopes to find it before Stanley or Stanley's partner can get secure possession. Zurich wants me to put up cash to finance the search and the early development."

"Well? Where do I come in? I am no miner, and I have no cash. I am eating husks."

"You listen. Singularly enough, Stanley has sent his partner up here to make me exactly the same proposition."

"That was Stan's partner to-day—that old gray goat?"

"Exactly. So, you see, I have two chances."

"I need not ask you," said Joey with a sage nod, "whether you intend to throw in your lot with the thieves or with the honest men. You will flock with the thieves."

"I will," said Mitchell grimly. "My cousin had quite supplanted me with my so-called Uncle McClintock. The old dotard would have left him every cent, except for that calf-love affair of Stan's with the Selden girl. Some reflections on the girl's character had come to McClintock's ears."

"Mitchell," said Joey, "before God, you make me sick!"

"What's the matter with you now, fool?" demanded Mitchell. "I never so much as mentioned the girl's name in McClintock's hearing."

"Trust you!" said the clerk. "You're a slimy toad, you are. You're nauseatin'. Pah! Ptth!"

"McClintock repeated these rumors to Stan," said the lawyer gloatingly. "Stan called him a liar. My uncle never liked me. It is very doubtful if he leaves me more than a moderate bequest, even now. But I have at least made sure that he leaves nothing to Stan. And now I shall strip his mine from him and leave him to rot in the penitentiary. For I always hated him, quite aside from any thought of my uncle's estate. I hate him for what he is. I always wanted to trample his girl-face in the mire."

"Leave your chicken-curses and come to the point," urged the junior member of the firm impatiently. "It is no news to me that your brain is diseased and your heart rotten. What is it you want me to do? Calm yourself, you white-livered maniac. I gather that I am in some way to meddle with this mine. If I but had your head for my very own along with the sand in my craw, I'd tell you to go to hell. Having only brains enough to know what I am, I'm cursed by having to depend upon you. Name your corpse! Come through!"

"You shut your foul mouth and listen. You throw me off."

"Give me a cigar, then. Thanks. I await your pleasure."

"Zurich warned me that Stanley's partner, this old man Johnson, had gone East and would in all probability come here to bring proposals from Stan. He came yesterday, bearing a letter of introduction from Stan. The fear that I would not close with his proposition had the poor old gentleman on needles and pins. But I fell in with his offer. I won his confidence and within the hour he had turned himself wrong side out. He made me a map, which shows me how to find the mine. He thinks I am to go to Arizona with him in a week—poor idiot! Instead, you are to get him into jail at once."

"How?"

"The simplest and most direct way possible. You have that Poole tribe under your thumb, have you not?"

"Bootlegging, chicken-stealing, sneak-thieving, arson, and perjury. And they are ripe for any deviltry, without compulsion. All I need to do is to show them a piece of money and give instructions."

"Get the two biggest ones, then—Amos and Seth. Have them pick a fight with the man Johnson and swear him into jail. They needn't hurt him much and they needn't bother about provocation. All they need to do is to contrive to get him in some quiet spot, beat him up decently, and swear that Johnson started the row without warning; that they never saw him before, and that they think he was drunk. Manage so that Johnson sees the inside of the jail by to-morrow at luncheon-time, or just after, at worst; then you and I will take the afternoon train for Arizona—with my map. I have just returned from informing my beloved uncle of Stanley's ignominious situation, and I told him I could go to the rescue at once, for the sake of the family honor. I thought the old fool would throw a fit, he was so enraged. So, good-bye to Nephew Stanley!"

"Look here, Mr. Oscar; that's no good, you know," remonstrated Pelman. "What's the good of throwing Johnson into jail for five or ten days—or perhaps only a fine? He may even have letters from Stan to some one else in Vesper, some one influential; he may beat the case. He'll be out there in no time, making you trouble. That old goat looks as if he might butt."

Mitchell smiled.

"That's only half my plan. The jailer is also one of your handy men. I'll furnish you plenty of money for the Pooles and for the jailer—enough to make it well worth their while. Contrive a faked rescue of Johnson. The jailer can be found trussed up and gagged, to-morrow about midnight. Best have only one of the Pooles in it; take Amos. He shall wear a mask and be the bold rescuer; he shall open the cell door, whisper 'Mitchell' to Johnson, and help him escape. Once out, without taking off his mask, Amos can hide Johnson somewhere. I leave you to perfect these details. Then, after discarding his mask, Poole can give the alarm. It is immaterial whether he rouses the undersheriff or finds a policeman; but he is to give information that he has just seen Johnson at liberty, skulking near such-and-such a place. Such information, from a man so recently the victim of a wanton assault at Johnson's hands, will seem a natural act."

"Mr. Mitchell, you're a wonder!" declared Joey in a fine heat of admiration. As the lawyer unfolded his plan the partner-clerk, as a devotee of cunning, found himself convicted of comparative unworth; with every sentence he deported himself less like Pelman the partner, shrank more and more to Joey the devil clerk. "The first part of your programme sounded like amateur stuff; but the second number is a scream. Any mistreated guy would fall for that. I would, myself. He'll be up against it for jail-breaking, conspiracy, assaulting an officer, using deadly weapons—and the best is, he will actually be guilty and have no kick coming! Look what a head that is of yours! Even if he should escape rearrest here, it will be a case for extradition. If he goes back to Arizona, he will be nabbed; our worthy sheriff will be furious at the insult to his authority and will make every effort to gather Mr. Johnson in. Either way you have Johnson off your shoulders."