Betelnut Jack’s tones were as remorseless as a storm; they offered nothing to hope; the hangdog one heard and crept away with a look on his face that was but ill to see. Once the door was closed behind him, Betelnut Jack turned with a cheerful gleam to me.
“That ends him! It’s as you guess. This informer is the son-in-law of the old German. He married the elder daughter. They came over four years ago and live in Hoboken. Then the father and the younger sister were to come. They put their whole fortune into the diamonds, aiming to cheat the Customs and manage a profit; and the girl wrote their plans and how they would hide the jewels to her sister. It was she who told her husband—this fellow who’s just sneaked out. He came to me and betrayed them; he was willing to ruin the old man and the girl to win riches for himself. But he’s gone; he’ll not return; we’ve seen and heard the last of them; one fears the jail, the other the wrath of his wife; and that’s the end.” Then Betelnut Jack, as he lighted a cigar, spoke the word which told to folk initiate of a division of spoil on the morrow. As I arose, he said: “Ask Lorns to come here.”
“Well,” remarked the Old Cattleman when the Sour Gentleman was done, “I don’t want to say nothin’ to discourage you-all, but if I’d picked up your hand that time I wouldn’t have played it. I shorely would have let that Dutch girl keep her beads. Didn’t the thing ha’nt you afterwards?”
“It gave me a deal of uneasiness,” responded the Sour Gentleman. “I am not proud of my performance. And yet, I don’t see what else I might have done. Those diamonds were as good as in the hands of Betelnut Jack from the moment the skulking brother-in-law brought him the information.”
“It’s one relief,” observed the Red Nosed Gentleman, “to know how that scoundrel came off no richer by his treachery.”
“What I observes partic’lar in the narration,” said the Old Cattleman, “is how luck is the predominatin’ feacher throughout. The girl an’ her old pap has bad luck in losin’ the gewgaw’s. You-all customs sharps has good luck in havin’ the news brought to your hand as to where them diamonds is hid, by a coyote whom you can bluff plumb outen the play at the finish. As for the coyote informer, why he has luck in bein’ allowed to live.
“An’ speakin’ of luck, seein’ that in this yere story-tellin’ arrangement that seems to have grown up in our midst, I’m the next chicken on the roost, I’ll onfold to you gents concernin’ ‘The Luck of Cold-sober Simms.’”