XIX—THE JOB Of AN ALTRUIST
THE judge sat there with his hat and coat on; the looks of that room did not invite anybody to take any comfort in it.
I leaned close to his ear and told him to stand up. Then I began to peel off his wrappings—overcoat, undercoat, and waistcoat. But when I unbuttoned his collar he pushed me away.
“I’ll explain it out to you just as soon as I get a chance, sir,” I whispered. “But we mustn’t make any noise here.” I gathered my courage. “I’m going to cut off your beard!” I had to clap my hand over his mouth to keep him quiet. “I can’t argue now! If Pratt lays eyes on you he’ll stampede. We mustn’t let any of that money get away.” I pushed him back upon the chair. “Keep down your hands,” I urged. “It’s got to be done. Your money is at stake—remember that! What’s a few whiskers compared with ten thousand dollars!” I was talking just as if I expected to swap hair for money.
I confess I did not have much of a plan worked out just at that moment—but certain notions were coming to me in sections, as one might say. And the principal notion just then was that I must not let a set of whiskers, even if they grew on Judge Kingsley, flag the whole proposition. That was the first thing to look after, now that we were close to the game—change his looks!
He realized as well as I that we couldn’t start any riot there on our side of that paper partition. I don’t believe any other consideration would have made him give in to me. If I had been getting his neck ready for the ax his looks would not have been more wild. I clipped his beard as carefully as I could with the shears and laid the tufts, as I removed them, in a little heap on the bed.
Mr. Pratt was thoroughly tired of hearing Mr. Dragg repeat himself; we knew that because Mr. Pratt said so with a lot of vigor and stated that he was going to bed in his own room.
Mr. Dragg advised him to be up early and see what happened to the “plug-hatter,” providing said “plug-hatter” tried to get away for Breed on the stage.
“I’ll do it,” promised Mr. Pratt. “I haven’t been having much fun down in this hog-wallow, and I need to have my feelings cheered up.”
Then he marched away down the corridor, making the whole building creak and shiver.
Mr. Dragg had considerable to say to himself, in the way of rehearsing his threats, while he was kicking off his shoes and getting ready for bed. Then his mutterings ended in a rasping snore—and he was off!
I was glad he was asleep because that gave me a chance to talk to the judge, keeping my voice down cautiously.
“I have some other plans, sir! I have had to think pretty quick! But the talk between those scamps has given me a rather good idea, I think.”
“You seem to be wasting your time on a lot of silly business,” muttered the judge. “This is boy’s play out of a detective dime novel, sir. We know where one of the robbers is. We can have him arrested. We can put the screws to him and find out where the other renegade is.”
“But that means going to law, Judge!”
“We must let the law handle it from now on.”
“We can’t afford to do that, sir.”
“But the law will—”
“The law will grab the crooks, maybe. But your money will be tied up along with ’em. We are strangers out here, Judge Kingsley. And you don’t want the notoriety of the thing. Remember, you bought a gold brick!” He winced, but it wasn’t on account of the shears! “Just getting those crooks into jail won’t help your case,” I insisted. “We haven’t much time to turn around in. The fifteenth of April isn’t very far away. I reckon it’s going to mean getting ten thousand dollars in ten days!” He cringed. “The law is too slow and careful for us just now! They pulled that money off by a trick. We must get it back by—— Well, I don’t know just yet how we’ll get it back—but it won’t be by any law business.”
“Do you intend to rob them and mix me into more trouble?”
“I’d rob ’em in a minute if I could do it and get away,” I told him, calmly. And then, because he was getting excited, I advised him to keep his jaw still so that the shears might not slip and cut him.
When the clipping was done I got my little kit out of my bag and got ready to shave him; there was a tin dish full of water in the corner of the room. Of course he was glad to have the stubble I had left under his chin scraped off, and submitted quietly. However, I knew my real tussle with Judge Zebulon Kingsley was just ahead of me.
On the wall there was a little mirror with glass so wavy that it made a human face seem like the physog of a baboon. I pulled it down and showed the judge his countenance with his whiskers off.
“You see it doesn’t change your looks very much, after all, Judge. Your beard was all under your chin instead of on your face.” I didn’t want to jump him too suddenly.
“If you have changed my looks as much as that glass represents, you’ve done a good job,” he said, dryly. It was the first time I had ever heard anything like humor from him, and I was cheered and made bolder—so bold that I came right out with it!
“I’ll have to change your appearance just a bit more, Judge. I know how to do it, for I did it once in my own case.”
I uncorked the bottle of gum. But when I started toward him he did not depend on his hands for defense—he put up his foot and pushed me away. I protested.
“There’s no use going half-way in this thing, sir. It only means a mustache for you out of your own beard.”
“I won’t be cockawhooped up in any such style!”
“Are you going to let those men recognize you as the town treasurer of Levant?”
He glared at me and kept his foot up.
“We’re after the money—we’re after the money!” I urged. “Just think what a little thing this is you’re balking on, sir!”
“But you give me no hint as to how you expect to get the money! I’m at the end of my patience. I won’t submit to any more foolishness.”
“This isn’t foolishness, Judge Kingsley! It’s a precaution we must take. I’ve got a plan to keep those men from jumping out on us in the morning—and they’ll be sure to see you.” I pushed down his foot and I picked up the hair on the bed and looked resolute. “It’s got to be done, sir. I’m going to do it!”
He gave in to me as he had in other cases when I became savage, but I realized that fury boiled in him.
I made a mighty good job of it, if I do say so, but he angrily refused to look at himself in the glass. I used all the hair in his beard and gave him a mustache that fairly cut in half that hatchet face of his; his best friend would not have known Judge Kingsley.
I advised him to go to bed and to be sure to sleep on his back so that the mustache would not be disturbed.
I sharpened the carpenter’s pencil and hid the ball of twine under my coat, the judge looking at me as savage as a bear.
“Now what?” he growled.
“Do you know anything about the right way of relocating a claim?” I asked. “Anything in law about it?”
“It’s more likely to be described in the thieves’ catechism,” he snarled. “I have never owned a copy!”.
That’s all the help I got from him!
Well, if I didn’t know much about the regular way, I reckoned I could make considerable trouble in town by blundering along with a little way of my own. So I tiptoed down-stairs.
Apparently Royal City had quit the job and gone to sleep. The hotel office was dark, and when I stepped forth into the night there was no glimmer of light anywhere. Even the lanterns that served as the city’s municipal lighting-plant in the streets had burned out or had been blown out. It was a case of grope, but I had looked about carefully when I went shopping and had a pretty good memory for locations.
There was a little pile of laths at the corner of the hotel. I had noticed them when I had lurked in the shadows with Judge Kingsley. I picked up a lath and wrote on its side, well up toward one end, “Relocated. Dragg.” Then I pushed the lath down into the mud at the corner of the hotel and tied to it the end of the ball of twine. With several laths under my arm I proceeded a few paces, unwinding the twine, and pushed another lath down and knotted my string about its end. Thus I circumnavigated the hotel, sticking down marked laths, knotting about them the twine. In this fashion I calculated I had declared on one Dragg a re-location of the hotel site—or rather made it seem that Dragg had tried on a clumsy trick to jump a land claim.
With footsteps muffled by the mud of Royal City, moving unseen in the night, I was truly a generous cuss. I located nothing for myself. I took the “Imperial Emporium” for Pratt, and re-located the site of the “Imperial Hotel” for Dawlin. Then I stole back into the tavern, taking off my muddy shoes at the door.
That slatted bed and the snores pealing everywhere kept me awake nearly all night, and next morning I was down before anybody else was stirring. In the gray dawn out slouched from an inner room the landlord, yawning, growling, blinking—beginning his day’s duties in a distinctly grouchy frame of mind.
“What time does the stage-coach leave for Breed City?” I asked.
“Nobody but a fool would take a stage for Breed this time of year—but a man who comes out here in March and mud-time, wearing a plug-hat, must be a fool. So you’ll leave at ha’f pas’ six,” was the landlord’s genial response.
“And what time is breakfast?”
“Time for you to get the stage. What do you want to ask such a cussed fool question as that for? What do you think I’m getting up to do at this hour in the morning?” Well, I wasn’t in any jolly mood myself. “I didn’t know but you might be up to sing a hymn to the morning star.”
“Say, you’re looking for trouble, ain’t you?” bawled the landlord. He came from behind the counter. “I’ll cave that plug—”
That made me good and mad! “No, I’m looking for cartridges to fit my guns,” I stated, pulling both weapons. “I’ve got only twelve left—six in each chamber.”
My friend checked himself so suddenly that he nearly tumbled on his nose.
“Does the store open early?”
“Yes, sir,” said the landlord, quite respectfully.
“Then I’ll take a stroll up that way. Make my bacon thick and be very careful not to fry the juice out of it.” There’s nothing like establishing a bit of a reputation in a strange town, especially if a fellow has planted seeds of trouble; I could see those laths through the window! I had begun to feel rather devilish. .
“Yes, sir,” said the landlord. “We aim to please.”
I glanced at my work of the evening before as I sauntered along the plank walk. The new laths and the white twine showed up well against the black adobe mud.
Sounds of housekeeping, clatter of dishes and of stove-covers indicated that the proprietor of the “Emporium” dwelt over the store. I rattled the door, and at last the man appeared and unlocked it from within. He was surly and slatted the box of cartridges across the counter.
“Is it because you don’t care for early customers that you have built a fence of laths and string about your place?” I inquired.
“There ain’t no such thing there.” But he hurried to the door. He gazed. He ran to the nearest lath and stooped down and read what was written thereon and cracked his fists together and kicked the lath and stamped it into the mud and swore loudly. “Pratt, hey? ‘Peacock’ Pratt trying one of his gambling bluffs because titles ain’t been settled here yet, is he? If a kettle-bellied catfish like Pratt thinks he can jump a city lot on me he’s got trouble coming his way on the down grade with the axle greased.”
There was much more that the infuriated merchant had to say regarding the general standing of Pratt, but I did not linger. I strolled into the “Imperial Hotel.”
“I knew you’d come back—they all do; but you can’t do business with me,” the landlord informed me before I had opened my mouth. “Once you turn your nose up at my house, then up it stays, as far as I am concerned! Mosey back to your pig-pen!”
“Very well! But I’ll drop back here when the new proprietor takes hold.”
“What new proprietor?”
“I suppose it’s a man named Dawlin. I note that his name appears as the man who has re-located this property.” The landlord took a jump and a look and saw the laths and string. He ran out of doors. He was an able-bodied man with a large voice, and he outdid his merchant neighbor in volume of cursing. It was plain that he was well acquainted with the mental and moral qualities of Ike Dawlin.
So I went back to my own tavern. Judge Kingsley was waiting in the office, and the landlord was talking to the old man with considerable affability.
“I was telling your friend here that we aim to please! I reckon the girl can fit you out with breakfast now if you’re minded to step into the dining-room.”
“Thank you—we’ll step in, sir. By the way, there seems to be considerable excitement on the street, Mr. Landlord. Men named Dawlin and Pratt, whoever they may be, have re-located business sites occupied by the big store and the other hotel. I just noticed that the same thing has been done to you; you’d better take a look outside.”
By the manner in which the owner of the “Pallace” pounded his way to the street it might have been guessed that the consciences of the pioneers of Royal City were not wholly clear as to their several rights of property. But the manner in which they were taking the re-locations showed that they were entirely ready to fight for what they had squatted on.
“By the bald-headed juductionary of Walla Walla County,” howled the “Pallace” landlord, “that tinhorn Dragg has sneaked out of my house in the night so as to do me up, has he?”
“Do you say it’s Dragg?” bawled the landlord of the “Imperial” from a distance. “It’s Dawlin, up here! He’s been boozing here in my house under cover for a week, but he wasn’t so drunk, so it seems, but he could dodge out last night and try to steal my property away from me.”
Say, I swapped one very large look with Zebulon Kingsley, who stood in the hotel door, staring from furious landlord to furious landlord. The old man had heard enough the night before to appreciate the value of that information in regard to Dawlin.
“It’s that skunk of a dressed-up Pratt in my case,” shouted the owner of the “Emporium” from farther up the street.
“I reckon I can show any man who tries to steal my property that I’m mighty wide awake mornings if I do sleep nights when honest men ought to be in bed,” announced the proprietor of the “Pallace.” He rushed into his hotel, and clattered up-stairs.
“When the wheels of a scheme are running in good shape it’s best to stay away and keep your fingers out of the gearing,” I said to Kingsley. “We’ll go in and eat breakfast.”
While we ate, loud voices sounded through the thin walls. Men were crowding into the hotel office. Profanity, denunciation, denial, went on and on. The judge fingered his makeshift mustache uneasily every time the bawling of Pratt was heard.
“Better keep your hands off that and drink your coffee from your spoon,” I suggested. “They’ll never know you!”
When we were ready to leave the dining-room I warned the judge not to look at Pratt. We could hear him thundering away in the office.
Dragg and Pratt were surrounded by men; the landlord of the “Pallace,” the proprietor of the “Emporium,” and a grim man with a huge revolver in his hand and a deputy sheriff’s badge on his breast were right in the front row.
“You can swear, threaten, and deny till your tongues drop off—it don’t go for a minute with us,” declared the landlord, “for we all know your style and your nerve. Because you have got away with a lot of hold-ups in other places it doesn’t go that you can come here and do us in Royal City.”
“Do you think we’d be fools enough to go and put our names on—” began Dragg, but he was promptly interrupted by the landlord.
“Whose names would you put on if you were trying to steal land for yourselves? You thought we’d rather settle than fight, that’s what! But we’re going to fight.”
It was my turn—and my chance.
“Excuse me, gentlemen. I’m a stranger to you all—merely a passing tourist. But I feel it’s my duty to state that I heard two men discussing a matter of re-locating land last evening. They were in the next room to mine in this hotel. I recognize their voices. Those are the men.” I pointed to Dragg and Pratt.
The deputy poked the muzzle of his gun into Dragg’s face to make him stop swearing. “Shut up! Everybody can see that this is a real gent, and if he’s got evidence we want to hear it.”
“The evidence isn’t much,” I said, meekly, “but I distinctly heard them say that they could clean up a nice pile of money by a re-location scheme. It was to be bluff to a large extent. If that information is worth anything you’re welcome to it. I would hate to see the prosperity of a hustling city like this held up for one moment by men trying to bunco honest citizens.”
“You listen to me,” roared Dragg. “That hellhound there is lying like a—”
The sheriff slapped him across the mouth. “There’s no real gent gets insulted by you in Royal City while I’m boss of law and order here.”
Outdoors was a noise of clanking of whiffletrees and the “ruckling” of wheels. A stage-coach, mud-daubed from tongue to roof-rail, was pulling out of an opposite stable-yard.
“I’ve got to take that stage,” raved Dragg. “The whole of Royal City can’t stop me. I’ve been monkey-doodled by a shark. He’s trying to get there ahead of me. It wouldn’t work here. I’m no fool. I knew it wouldn’t work.” He yelled so loudly and talked so rapidly that they listened to him. “My scheme was for Breed—and it was a cinch! He’s stealing it from me—that doggone, lying plug-hatter found out that I was going to re-locate claims in—”
“Seem to be convicting yourself out of your own mouth!” broke in a citizen.
“I’m going to Breed by this stage. I’ve got to go!” gasped Dragg, twisting his throat from the sheriff’s clutch.
“You’re going into the calaboose right now—and Pratt is going there, too, and Dawlin is going as soon as they get his clothes on him,” declared the officer. “Grab a-holt, boys, and help me get on the wristers.”
“You men will stay here—and Dawlin, too, till we find out what you mean by this trick,” said my landlord. “You don’t get out of here to run away and file your location claims!”
“Send a man to the county-seat,” raged Pratt. “Look at the records. That will prove that we haven’t tried anything on here.”
“We don’t need any advice from you chaps as to what we shall do—whether it’s holding you for a show-down or shooting you out of this place when we have your numbers.”
I looked at Mr. Pratt. That remark started my think-works into action. I had my men anchored, to be sure, but that wasn’t getting me anything in the money line—and without doubt Royal City would cool down pretty quickly and send the men kiting. When they scooted they would go by rail, of course. That meant difficulties, the thought of which had already discouraged me. I needed to keep those chaps in the open—and the wilder the open the better! In the brush, where it was man to man, instead of in the city where law was safe and sane—and almighty slow! I needed to be quick and crazy!
Mr. Pratt was beginning to get his wits back. He was bellowing so wildly when I accused him and Dragg that he did not seem to sense the situation. He turned to me.
“Damn your lying tongue! What do you mean by putting up this job on me?”
“I have simply stated what I overheard!”
“Heard me say that I was going to jump claims? Why, I told Dragg I wouldn’t—”
“You told Dragg that you and your partner came down here on purpose to jump claims!”
He was so mad he was nigh black in the face. “Do I know you? Have I ever done dirt to you?”
I shook my head and looked him over with contempt. From the time I had left Levant I had been at a loss to decide what front I would put on when I met up with those men who had robbed the judge. I had thought all along that my best plan would be to build on my acquaintance with Jeff Dawlin and use his tips which were to put me next to the parties I was after. Then I might be able to come up on their blind side—if they had one—and—
Well, right there I had stopped. What could I do? Then I had been hooked by that infernal Dragg! In that mess with him I had allowed chance to swing me and our fortunes. After that squabble with Dragg I could not hope to make much of a hit with his associates, eh? Therefore, I was jumping for the other extreme and I proposed to make Mr. Pratt and his friends just as ugly as insults and injury could serve. I felt like a boy thumbing his nose at angry wildcats. And in my desperation I hoped that the wildcats would come chasing me. Chasing me where? Why not to Breed, wherever that might be?
I certainly was sure of Mr. Dragg, according to his threats and his promises. And if I could stick a few more darts into the broad flanks of Mr. Pratt and leave them stinging it was full likely that Mr. Dragg’s appeals to that gentleman would have much more effect than they did the night before.
A couple of citizens came dragging in another prisoner, a red-eyed and ferociously angry person, and I knew by Judge Kingsley’s expression that the round-up was complete.
“Who says I did it? Who says I—”
“I say so!” I told him. “You held me up and you asked me to buy twine and pencil for you.”
“That’s right,” stated the merchant. “The gent is right.”
“Of course it looked all square to me,” I said. “I never heard how claim-jumpers worked!” I told them. “I saw he had been drinking and I thought the string-and-pencil notion was only his bee buzzing!”
It was reckless lying, but that crowd was too much excited to bother with mere details.
“Why, you mutt-jawed smokestack, you, I never laid eyes on you in all my life!” raged Dawlin.
“I reckon my memory is a little better than yours, for I wasn’t drunk,” I reminded him.
The sheriff was obliged to assign two more men to the controlling of Mr. Dawlin, who was a husky chap. He was far too much occupied to pay any attention to the judge, who stood in a corner and goggled at me with plain and sure conviction that I had gone stark, staring crazy.
“I’ll bet you a thousand dollars,” roared Pratt, “that—”
“You’re a cheap tinhorn. You never saw a thousand dollars.”
Mr. Pratt jumped up and down and tried to throw off the clutch of the men who were holding him.
I felt perfectly safe in that crowd; I made up my mind to keep prodding till I was sure that Mr. Pratt and his friends had developed enough interest in me so that they would give up all other business till they had settled their grudges.
I patted my breast pocket. “I always carry ten thousand dollars around with me just to keep the draughts off my chest. I find money better than a folded newspaper,” I told him.
I had been keeping my eye on the stage-coach for some few minutes. It had hauled up at the post-office. The driver came out with mail-bags and tossed them into the boot.
“Landlord, will you fetch our valises?” I asked.
“Certainly, sir!”
“I’ve got a few thousand in my own pocket,” yelled Pratt.
“So have I!” howled Dawlin.
“And we’ll spend it getting to you,” they shouted in chorus.
“It won’t cost you much to chase me,” I said, provokingly. “Cheap skates of your sort wouldn’t spend much getting to a man you’re afraid of.”
That taunt, in the ears of those bystanders, made Pratt and his cronies wild in earnest.
“I’m only going as far as Breed,” I said. “I’ve got to stay there for some time on business. When these good folks let you out of jail suppose you run over and call on me!”
“You don’t dare to wait there for us!” said Dawlin.
“I’ll bet you five thousand I do dare!”
They didn’t take me up on that bet. Perhaps I seemed too certain that I meant what I said. I intended to seem certain. I wanted the company of those gentlemen in Breed, no matter what the risks were. And I was mighty glad when Mr. Pratt and Mr. Dawlin had bragged about the thousands they had in their pockets. I looked into the glittering eyes of Pratt and I knew that even in his fury he was taking much comfort in his belief that I was giving him a straight tip about Breed.
“You don’t dare to hang up over there till I come,” he snarled, testing me out.
“If I am not there, I’ll hand over five hundred dollars to start a city reading-room here,” I declared. “I call on these gentlemen to bear witness.”
“I hope we won’t get the reading-room,” stated the landlord, standing with the luggage, “for I want to see a few fresh galoots get theirs.”
“It’s time to test out whether respectable business men can go about in this country without being insulted and bothered by rascals,” I observed. “Come over to Breed after Royal City gets done with you.” And just to clinch the thing I snapped my fingers under Pratt’s nose when I passed him.
I just naturally knew, that moment, that Mr. Pratt had made a binding appointment with me.
The landlord had hailed the stage, which was surging past through the mud. I was obliged to push the judge to start him toward the door; he seemed to be in a daze.
“But we’ve got to stay here,” he croaked in my ear. “They’ve got the money on ’em. They brag about it. You’ll never lay eyes on them again!”
I hurried him along the plank walk toward the coach. “Don’t fret one mite about that part, sir. If we stay here all we can do is stand outside the calaboose and ask ’em to push our money out through the bars. And I’m afraid they are not feeling generous enough just now.”
“But the law will keep them—”
“No, it won’t, sir, if I’m any judge of the sporting blood out here. Royal City will be mighty curious to find out what happens when Mr. Pratt and his friends arrive in Breed. And they’ll come! Don’t worry!”
But the judge was a stubborn old customer! He kept holding back.
“Why not settle it with ’em here?”
“Because I have always read that when a good general has a chance to do it, he picks his own battle-ground and throws up his earthworks before the enemy heaves in sight. I have picked Breed, sir! As to the earthworks, I’ll do some meditating on the way.”
Already my handy Mr. Dragg had given me the germ of a notion, though, of course, he had not meant to make me any presents.