“Nope, not for me!” answered Wiley wearily. “You haven’t heard all the story. I fell down on the final payment–it makes no difference how–and when I came back Blount had jumped the mine and Stiff Neck George was in charge. But instead of warning me off he hid behind a car and–well, I don’t care to go back there, now.”
294“Why, certainly! You must!” declared the Colonel warmly. “You were acting in self defense and I consider that your conduct was justified. In fact, my boy, I wish to congratulate you–Charley tells me he had the drop on you.”
“Yes, sure,” grumbled Wiley, “but you aren’t the judge–and there’s a whole lot more to the story. It happens that I took an option on Blount’s Paymaster stock, but when I offered the payment he protested the contract and took the case to court. Now–he’s got the town of Vegas in his inside vest pocket, the lawyers and judges and all; and do you think for a minute he’s going to let me come back and take away those four hundred thousand shares?”
“Four hundred thousand?” repeated the Colonel incredulously, “do you mean to tell me─”
“Yes, you bet I do!” said Wiley, “and I’ll tell you something else. According to the dates on the back of those certificates it was Blount that sold you out. He sold all his promotion stock before the panic; and then, when the price was down to nothing, he turned around and bought it back. I knew from the first that he’d lied about my father and I kept after him till I got my hands on that stock–and then, when I’d proved it, he tried to put the blame on you!”
“The devil!” exclaimed the Colonel, and paced up and down, snapping his fingers and muttering to himself. “The cowardly dastard!” he burst out at last. “He has poisoned ten years of my life. 295I must hurry back at once and go to John Holman and apologize to him publicly for this affront. After all the years that we were pardners in everything, and then to have me doubt his integrity! He was the soul of honor, one man in ten thousand; and yet I took the word of this lying Blount against the man I called My Friend! I remember, by gad, as if it were yesterday, the first time I really knew your father; and Blount was squeezing me, then. I owed him fifteen thousand dollars on a certain piece of property that was worth fifty thousand at least; and at the very last moment, when he was about to foreclose, John Holman loaned me the money. He mortgaged his cattle at the other bank and put the money in my hand, and Blount cursed him for an interfering fool! That was Blount, the Shylock, and Honest John Holman; and I turned against my friend.”
“Yes, that’s right,” agreed Wiley, “but if you want to make up for it, make ’em quit calling him ‘Honest John’!”
“No, indeed,” cried the Colonel, his voice tremulous with emotion. “He shall still be called Honest John; and if any man doubts it or speaks the name fleeringly he shall answer personally to me. And now, about this stock–what was that, Virginia, that you were saying about my holdings?”
“Why, Mother put them up as collateral on a loan, and Blount claimed them at the end of the first month.”
“All my stock? Well, by the horn-spoon–how 296much did your mother borrow? Eight–hundred? Eight hundred dollars? Well, that is enough, on the face of it–but never mind, I will recover the stock. It is certainly a revelation of human nature. The moment I am reported dead, these vultures strip my family of their all.”