“Wait up, partner—go slow ’til I ketches my breath. Yeou ain’t agoin’ to stagger me by sayin’ that this here cook might be him?”
“Just what I mean, Perk.”
“Simeon—Simeon Balderson?”
“No other, brother, undoubtedly a prisoner, and being made to serve that miserable gang of hoodlums in a menial capacity, partly to humble him, and give them plenty of chances to throw mean jibes at him as the representative of the Service they hate so much. It’s the irony of Fate, if ever such a thing could be.”
“Dead certain be yeou, Jack?”
The other nodded in the affirmative, adding:
“He must have been badly injured in the scrap before he and his companion were knocked out, for he certainly never limped like that when I knew him, only a year or so back. Possibly the second man may have been wiped out in the gun battle; though why they should spare Simeon’s life is a puzzle to me; but some day we’ll understand, since I wouldn’t think of going away from here and leaving him in the hands of those human tigers.”
“Shake on that same, ole hoss; I’m with yeou every time, ’cause it means we’re agoin’ to have some mighty stiff work on aour hands ’fore we kin send a ball daown in each alley, an’ make a clean sweep o’ the duck-pins; an’ that’s the dizzy game I sure likes most.”
There was really nothing like brag about what Perk said, as his comrade knew full well; in the past he had seen Perk put up a grand fight, and never could forget how he slashed, and cut, and struck home with any old weapon he chanced to have in his hands, until a clean swathe had been cut through the ranks of their foes. He always appeared to be a little ashamed of having lost his head, and striking blind, excusing himself under the plea that he must have been in a bit of a “tailspin.”
“Here we can stay, Perk, without running much risk of being discovered; for I hardly imagine any of those chaps would bother exercising themselves to try and find out what the country around their Happy Valley looks like.”