“The possible person, don’t you mean, judge? It’s time you got the general little scheme of me, even though I do look mussed up this crowded afternoon.”
Pape’s jocularity was a surface effect. The serious coöperation of his every thought and muscle would be needed if he won against such odds. With his gun he waved back two of the crew who, evidently more accustomed to the glance of the unfriendly eye than was the jurist, were edging nearer. Still grinning with pseudo-pleasantry, he tried to guard against attack from behind by backing toward the second of the ark-bedded carts.
“This morning, Allen, you got me out of limbo through your drag with the law,” he continued. “Didn’t hope for a so-soon opportunity to refund that debt. But don’t think I ain’t ready with the interest.”
“The only way to keep you out of new trouble is to leave you in the old,” snorted the small big man. “If this gun-play is for my amusement, I’ll say that your methods are as perverted as your sense of humor. You’re about as practical as a Bolshevist. Pray desist. Also—pardon my frankness—get out while you can—out of trouble that doesn’t concern you in the slightest.”
“Pardon my frankness—” Pape, too, could feign politeness—“but this trouble does concern me in the greatest. I hate being in your debt. I feel I should take this chance to pay and save you!”
“Save me—from what?”
Although the Colt still held his gaze, the jurist put the question with manifest relief. Argument was his stock in profession—perhaps he hoped from that.
Pape couldn’t restrain an out-loud chuckle, so near did he seem to the consummation of his promises to Jane. “Just you hand over Granddad Lauderdale’s crypt and those carte-blank permits and I’ll save you from being your own lawyer defending a charge of before-and-after burglary. Urge ’em upon me, judge, then call off your crew and vamoose pronto—which is roof-of-America for get out quick yourself.”
Allen sent a glance of appeal among his hirelings, but elicited no response. To them there was, in truth, a stronger appeal in the careless way the Westerner handled his “hardware.” They looked to be gunmen themselves, but of the metropolitan sort that shoot singly from behind or in concert before. Certain was it that some one would get punctured did the revolver speak and each was concerned lest he be the ill-fated human “tire.”
Allen seemed left to his own devices. Crumpling the cryptic sheet in one hand, he started slowly forward. Pape lifted his foot for a stride along the cart-side. But some time elapsed before the sole of his boot again met mother earth. With the suddenness of most successful attacks on a rear guarded over-confidently, the one leg which, for the moment, supported his weight was jerked from under with a violence that pitched him face forward.