“Mebbe it relieves your mind some of worry,” returned the captor; “but it does you little good.”
“Don’t you think it!” returned Bland harshly. “I settles with that old Injun, you bet your boots!”
“First you settles with the law, Bland. You roams free a long time with a good price on your head. I am sorry fer you, but I reckons you are due to stretch hemp.”
Texas Bland actually laughed.
“Pete,” he said, “the rope ain’t made yet what hangs me.”
“Your nerve is good, but I opine you’re wrong this yere time. I has you, Bland, and I keeps you. I deliver you to them what wants you bad.”
“That’s all right, Pete,” was the cool retort. “No hard feelings on my account, you understand. I takes my medicine when I has to, and so I swallows this all pleasant and smiling. Just the same, you mark what I tells you, the rope ain’t made what hangs Texas Bland. I goes back a-looking for that red skunk later, and I pots him. When I gits a chance, I starts a lead mine in his carcass. The idea of being fooled by a redskin galls me up a heap. But you don’t tell me any how it happens you drops down thar and gathers us in just then.”
“I am some acquainted with Frank Merriwell. I has done business for him before. When he comes sailing into Cottonwood and locates me, he says: ‘Curry, I am up against it some, and I needs assistance.’ ‘I am yours to order,’ says I. ‘Whatever is a-doing?’
“Then he up and tells me that a gent with a whole lot of coin, what calls himself a money king, is trying to get possession of some new mines he has located. This gent, he says, has faked up a false charge against him and gives him a heap o’ trouble. This gent’s partner once tried mighty hard to get his paws on another mine belonging to Merriwell, and in the end he runs up against a bullet and lays down peaceful and calm. This gent’s name were Sukes. The one what is a-bothering Merriwell now is Macklyn Morgan.”
“You interest me a-plenty,” nodded Bland. “Now, there were some gent behind this yere deal what says it pays us well if we seizes those mines. Just who it were that puts up the coin fer the job I didn’t know for sure. All I knows is that it comes straight through a gent what I depends on, and the coin is in sight the minute we delivers the mines over. I reckons, Pete, the gent you speak of is the one what lays the job out fer us.”