“Can you tie that?” burst out the grinning Perk, who seemed more tickled at hearing these words of praise than was the blushing recipient himself. “I kinder guessed my best pal was topnotch ’long them lines when I watched him adoin’ his stuff. So Jack, in case you ever do get knocked out o’ the cloud-chasin’ game, plenty o’ time left to climb up the ladder in the surgical ward.”
Jack hurriedly left the room, although it would have been only natural for him to feel a little thrill at being thus praised by a professional man whom he had already begun to hold in high esteem.
Perk joined him outside, but was kept from doing much talking by the necessity of carrying out a number of needful errands. They did not expect to waste any unnecessary time hanging about the post—the trail was already cold, and it was essential that they get on the move as speedily as possible. Jack well knew what difficult, and perhaps even sanguine work still remained to be accomplished, and as usual was eager to get it all over with.
“We can’t hang fire in this business,” he was telling Perk, who perhaps did not look at things in quite the same light, since his nature differed from that of his companion; “and until I see our man trussed up, to await our pleasure in hopping off for the border, I’ll not have a peaceful moment. From now on this has to be a whirlwind campaign, and no mistake—get that, partner?”
“Huh! pleases me okay, ol’ hoss,” the other told him, nodding his head vigorously; “I’m in the game up to my neck, an’ with me it sure is ‘Pike’s Peak—or Bust!’”
“We’ll take a little time to look over our stuff,” suggested Jack, the always wise worker, who seldom left the slightest thing undone, and consequently, like other cautious sky pilots, seldom had a real accident overtake him. “Make sure you’ve got plenty of cartridges for your gun, and than add another belt for good measure, because you never can tell what may happen, and it’s best to be on the safe side—as a fire insurance agent once said on his advertising cards, it’s ‘better to have insurance, and not need it; than to need insurance and not have it.’”
“Yeah! I know it, Jack, boy,” admitted Perk, “even if sometimes I do get caught nappin’, an’ have a peck o’ trouble ’count o’ my carelessness. I’m set to carry along every shell I fetched up here with me—this is the job they’re meant for, an’ why be a miser ’bout it?”
“That’s the ticket, partner,” Jack told him, apparently quite satisfied he had started his companion on the right road—Perk sometimes had to be “shown,” and then he would follow to the bitter end.
Red Lowden had also been making sure nothing was forgotten, so far as he could tell. Of course he was somewhat in the dark as to just what means Jack meant to employ in order to bring about the success of the undertaking; but in the short time he had known the young Secret Service detective he had realized the capacity the other exhibited for handling just such intricate cases—if it were not so the astute Head of the Organization at Washington would never have entrusted this difficult problem to his hands.
Of course, from this time forward it would be Sergeant Lowden who would take the lead, since he knew the country, and it was all a puzzle to Jack—even Perk would not be half as well acquainted with the ground as the one who for a dozen years had been going over the entire district for a radius of probably fifty miles in all directions.