"If I had wanted one I should have sent for it," replied Wharton Kendrick dryly. "I've had enough experience of them to know that I don't want them. I want you because I must have some one I can trust."
I murmured my thanks at this expression of esteem. It was the more gratifying as, like the rest of my father's old friends, he had carefully avoided giving me his legal business, with a wise but annoying preference for having me try my 'prentice hand on the litigation of strangers. So at this I professed my entire willingness to be of service.
"That's good," he said. "Now, I've had warning from a source I trust that Bolton is fixing up some sort of surprise for me. I want you to find out what it is. Six months ago I got the same sort of hint that came to me this morning, and I forgot all about it. Then one day I got a jolt that cost me a cool hundred thousand dollars when I found that Bolton had taken the Golden West Land and Water Company away from me. He got hold of some of the stock that I thought was in safe hands, and I had to pay four prices to get it. I've a notion that the thing is more serious this time."
Something in his voice suggested alarming possibilities.
"Do you mean that Bolton is plotting against your life?"
"Oh, I don't say that. But, oh, thunder! You wouldn't put it beyond him, would you?"
"Not beyond his morals, perhaps; but I should certainly put it beyond his courage."
"Oh, P. Bolton isn't the man to go gunning for any one. But he hasn't any scruples against getting another man to do it for him. That's why he owns the Miroban mine."
"You don't mean to say so? I never heard of that."
"I suppose not. You're too young to remember the murder of the Eddy boys. They had located the Miroban mine, and one day they struck it rich. Bolton put in a claim that he had bought it from a prior locator, and pretty soon they were all tangled up in litigation. One night somebody poked a double-barreled shot-gun through a window in the Eddy boys' cabin, and filled them full of buckshot. There was a good deal of excitement about it for a while, but nobody could find out the man who did the shooting, and we were all too busy in those days to waste much time hunting criminals. When the talk died down, Bolton was found in possession of the Miroban."