"Did you come specially for that?" demanded Ike. "Because if you did, how did you know I was here?"
"I didn't--this meeting is purely accidental."
"Oh!" muttered Ike incredulously.
"I'll be plain, Slump," said Ralph, "for I see you don't welcome my company or my mission. Your father is worried to death about you, your mother is slowly pining away. If you have any manhood at all, you will go home."
"What for?" flared out Ike, savagely swinging the iron rod--"to get walloped! Worse, to get jugged! You played me a fine trick spying into Cohen's and getting the gang in a box. I ought to just kill you, I ought!"
"Well, hear what I have to say before you begin your slaughter," said Ralph quietly. "Out of sympathy for your mother, and because your father has friends among the railroad men, I think the disposition of the railroad company is to treat you with leniency in the matter of the stolen junk, if you show you are ready to do the square thing."
"They can't prove a thing against me!" shouted Ike wrathfully. "Think I don't know how affairs stand? They can't do anything with Cohen, either, unless some one peaches--and no one will."
"Don't be too sure of that," advised Ralph. "They can lock you up, and if they delve very deep, can convict you on circumstantial evidence. But I don't want to discuss that. It's plain business, and now is your time to act. Go home, give the company a chance to get back its property, and I'll guarantee they will deal lightly with you--this time."
"Put my head in the jaws of the lion?" derided Ike--"not much! Say, Ralph Fairbanks, what do you take me for? And what do I know about their stolen plunder?"
"You drove off from Stanley Junction that night with it."