“Fired!” cried Dave and Roger simultaneously.
“That’s the size on it, son. He got kind o’ fresh with the boss, and Jim wouldn’t stand for it nohow. I don’t know exactly wot the rumpus was about, but that feller didn’t lose no time vamoosin’.”
“I wish you would tell me some of the particulars about him,” went on Dave. “Then I’ll tell you something that may interest you.”
“I ain’t got much to tell, ’cause I didn’t like the feller, and consequently didn’t have much to do with him. Fact is, he wasn’t in cahoots with nobody around the ranch. He had a hang-dog way about him none of us cottoned to.”
“But I wish you would tell me what you do know,” insisted our hero.
Thereupon the cowboy, who said his name was Pete Sine, told how Nick Jasniff had come to the Double Eight Ranch some weeks before with a hard-luck story and had been given a job as an all-around handy man.
“But he wasn’t handy at all,” announced Pete Sine. “Fact is, he was the most unhandy critter I ’most ever met up with. But he told such a pitiful story, the boss and some of the fellers felt sorry for him, so they all done the best they knowed how for him—that is at the start. But he soon showed the yellow streak that was in him, and then, as I said before, the boss got wise to him and fired him. Now what do you know about him?”
Dave, aided by Roger, gave many of the particulars concerning Nick Jasniff’s past doings, and our hero related the details of the fight on the road, and how he had lost the contents of his pocketbook.
“Snortin’ buffaloes!” ejaculated Pete Sine, giving his thigh a resounding slap with his hand. “I knew it! I sized that feller up from the very start. I warned Jim Dackley about him, but Jim was too tender-hearted to see it—that is at first. Now when did this happen?” went on the cowboy. And after Dave had mentioned the day, he continued: “That was the very day the boss fired him!”
“And have you any idea where he went to?” questioned our hero quickly.