“Brant, you are most provokingly cold-blooded, don’t you know it? Here I have been at the trouble to put you in the way of opening up a veritable mine of first-class sensation, and you are going away without so much as giving me a squint down the shaft thereof. Do you call that giving a man a fair shake?”
Brant sat down again. “What do you want me to say?” he asked.
“Say? Why, everything. Do you know these men? or is it a case of mistaken identity? Are they after your scalp? or do you yearn for theirs? Can’t you open up the blinds and let in a little daylight?”
Brant shook his head. “Not for publication. You don’t know what you ask, Forsyth.”
“Publication be hanged! Who said anything about printing it, I’d like to know! Don’t you suppose a newspaper man has bowels as well as other people? I didn’t get you up here to work you for the Plainsman.”
“Then that is different,” Brant conceded. “I’ll tell you what I can, which isn’t much. I have seen these men; they followed me home last night at midnight. But if I ever knew them, I have forgotten who they are. As to the advertisement, I can only guess its purport. If the guess is right, there is only one man in Colorado who need be disturbed about it, and he is not in Denver.”
The editor turned to his desk and ran through a pile of telegrams, pausing at one dated from Leadville.
“Does that help your guess?” he inquired, handing the message to Brant.
“Advertiser’s name is John Brinton,” was what the typewritten line said; and Brant nodded.
“Yes, and no; I can’t understand. Forsyth, I am going out to hunt those fellows down.”