“I’ve changed my mind,” he laughed. “I don’t want to drink, but I have to in order to forget—not my sins, but the sight of your hypocritical face.”
“Remember there is business to talk over after supper,” warned Smythe, “and there is our report to Colonel Hallibut to frame up, which I, as the surviving party, must reluctantly present in person.”
He reached over with a claw and gripped the bottle.
“After we have arranged a certain campaign of action,” he smirked, “you may get as drunk as you please. Until then, my dear Watson, you must stay on the anxious seat.”
And leaving the agent huddled before the fireplace he passed into the other room to awaken the sleeping Sambo.
CHAPTER XX
Mr. Smythe Visits the Colonel
Next morning, before daybreak, Mr. Smythe started for St. Thomas. He reached the settlement just as Colonel Hallibut, with brows puckered into a scowl, came riding slowly up the brown path through the scattered timber of the broken land. The Colonel had faced the north winds from the lake and the veins in his face lay blue beneath his cheeks like tiny frozen water-runs. As he turned to the right of the path toward his home Smythe’s white horse rounded a distant copse. The rider was humming a hymn and his head was bent piously on his breast. The Colonel reined up and waited for him, quite aware that Smythe’s hawk-like eyes had caught sight of him fully as soon as he had caught sight of Smythe.
“Humph,” mused Hallibut, “what’s in the wind now, I wonder? Nothing good brings that man here this day.”
“Well, Smythe,” he called, “it’s easy to see that you couldn’t hire the old mare this morning, otherwise you’d have walked over. What’s up?”
“Why, bless my soul!” exclaimed the dealer, sitting erect in his saddle with a start, “if it isn’t the dear Colonel himself. Good-morning, sir,” he smiled, lifting his old coon-skin cap.