"You'll give the whole thing away to the authorities before we can have a moment's counsel together and see what we can do."
"What can we do?" cried Haxon, his palms outspread dolorously. "We are caught here like a rat in a trap—we can't get away. God! If I had thirty-five dollars in the world I'd cut and run, and leave you to shift for yourself."
Lloyd eyed him critically.
"Haxon, how can you show so much courage and nerve in that cursed high dive of yours and be such a coward in a crisis like this?" he demanded sternly.
"'Cause why? 'Cause the high dive is biz, but 'tain't my trade to defy the Federal courts for offences I have never c'mitted."
He felt the aspersion on his courage—the lash cut his somewhat thick sensibilities.
"Look here, Hil'ry——" He sat down astride on a chair, facing its back and beating out on its wooden rim the several points as he made them. "If I was in the illicit distilling lay I'd be fixed for the biz, and I'd take my risks along with the profits as cool as I do in the high dive. I'd be where I was known, too,—at home,—an' there'd be some chanst of friends to back you, an' lawyers for hire, an' money at hand—'t wouldn't be at the end of a blue fizzle on the road. But here wheer I don't actually know so much as the name of the clerk of the hotel! I haven't got a fiver to save my life!"
He turned the pockets of his trousers inside out to demonstrate his impecuniosity, and his aspect as he sat thus, his round face pallid, and his hair roached and standing straight in front, might have suggested the ludicrous to another man, but to Hilary Lloyd it only accented and illustrated the stress of the untoward situation.
"I couldn't get a nickel by telegraphing—even if I left the wire to be paid at the other end, for I raised every cent I could scrape to start the show out on the road; and you are in the same fix. An' here are you an' I an' all the men in the company in this strange place, liable to arrest and jail for aiding and abetting in the illicit sale of wild-cat whisky—oh Lord!" His great full voice rose plangent on the air.
"I'll cut your tongue out if you lay it again to them words!" declared Lloyd, in a frenzy of apprehension. He darted to the door and opening it gazed down the cross-halls to detect a possible eavesdropper. He then hastened to the window and looked out on the balcony. There was no one near—no suggestion that suspicion had been aroused. He returned to his chair, reassured, but tingling with the excitement of the disastrous possibility and both angry and dismayed.