“Not this year,” said the big man, with another mellow laugh. “And I’ll tell you why. Just before this train reaches town it’s going to stop and let us law-breakers get off, scatter and drop into town as best we can without calling attention to ourselves. And to-morrow morning you’ll read in The Tribune how the Mesquite dam, weakened by the recent storms and cloud-bursts, went out by littles during the night, watched over and kept from going as a disastrous whole by a brave little bunch of”—he looked around the table and winked solemnly—“by a brave little bunch of cowboys from the ‘Lazy X.’” Then, with sudden soberness: “Promise me that you won’t give it away, gentlemen all. It’s the only fee I shall exact for my small part in the affair.”
And the promise was given while the locomotive whistle was sounding for the Brewster yard-limits, and Maxwell was pulling the air-cord for the out-of-town stop.
VI
The High Kibosh
SINCE it is a Western boast that the West does nothing by halves, the Brewster Town and Country Club owns two houses; a handsome pink-lava home on one of the quieter business streets of the city, and a rambling, overgrown bungalow at the golf-links on the north shore of the High Line reservoir lake, rechristened, in honor of Colonel Baldwin’s pretty daughter, “Lake Corona.”
On Saturday afternoons, which are bank holidays in the progressive little inter-mountain city, the links at Lake Corona are well patronized; and on a certain Saturday in early September, in the year written down in the annals of the inter-mountain region as “the year of the great railroad war,” one of the players was the big-muscled athlete who figured for the Brewsterites as an expert soil-tester in the Government service, and whose nickname in the Timanyoni country was “Scientific Sprague.”
Sprague’s opponent on the links on this particular Saturday afternoon was Stillings, the railroad lawyer; and at the conclusion of the game, which had been a rather easy walk-over for the big athlete, Stillings offered the winner a seat in his runabout for the return to Brewster.
“Sorry, but I can’t go with you this time, Robert,” said the heavy-weight, when he had tipped his caddie and struggled into his coat. “Maxwell is coming out to dinner and I promised to wait for him. He thinks he is up for another match game with the big-leaguers.”
Stillings paused with his hand on the dash of the runabout. “That so?” he queried. “More piracy?”
“Nothing actually in sight, as yet. But Dick has been getting fresh tips from the New York head-quarters. The big-money people who want your railroad have been keeping pretty quiet since the Mesquite fizzle; possibly they were afraid you folks might have the evidence on them. But now the air seems to be full of lightning again, and nobody, not even President Ford himself, appears to know just where it is going to strike.”
The lawyer reached over and retarded the spark on the racing engines of the little car.