In this conference behind the locked door there was a slight disagreement arising in a very natural reluctance on the part of one of the plotters to play the cat’s-paw for the other.
“Coming right down to brass tacks, Jim Harding, I don’t see why I want to monkey with your end of the game, anyhow,” said the cat’s-paw. “All I need is to get even with him for knocking me out, and I can do that the first time I get the drop on him, ’thout mixin’ up any in your deal.”
“Yes, and you can get yourself choked with a rope for doing it,” added Harding. “Now, on the other hand, if my scheme works—and it will work if you will do your part—the sheriff will do the evening-up business for you, and you can sit back and read all about it in the newspapers the next morning.”
“Yes, ‘if’; but that there ‘if’ is bigger than Pike’s Peak. You seem to think if you can get hold o’ them dockyments he’s got, you can change a few words in ’em and make out that Plucky George is the man they want—chuck him plumb into your shoes. Maybe you can; but there’s a heap o’ holes in a skimmer. Seems like you’ve lived long enough to know that.”
“That is all right; I know what I am doing,” was the confident assertion. “As it stands now, it is between me and Brant. It was an all-around free fight, and he was mixed up in it, too. Once let me get hold of those papers, and he will have his hands full to prove that he didn’t kill Hank Brinton.”
“I don’t savez it that way; but that part of it is your funeral—not mine. What is it you want me to do? Measure it off.”
“You know; I want you to get the papers.”
“Why don’t you do it yourself?”
“It’s out of my line. I don’t happen to have been over the road for house-breaking—as you have—and I am not up in that branch of the business.”
Gasset scowled and gritted out an oath at this, but finally asked, “Well—when?”