"I'm letting you say it of my own flesh and blood, Dick; and it shows you how badly broken I am. After all, it doesn't lead anywhere."
"Yes, it does. Let us suppose, just for the sake of argument, that your father doesn't know how much those letters mean to you—I know it's a pretty hard thing to imagine, but we'll do it by main strength and awkwardness. Let us suppose again, that being the case, that you go to him frankly and show him in a few well-chosen words just where he has landed you; tell him you've got to have those letters—simply got to have them—to save your face. I know your father, Evan, a good bit better than you do; he'd give you the earth with a fence around it if you should ask him for it."
Evan Blount got slowly out of his chair, stood up, and put his hands upon the smaller man's shoulders.
"Dick, do you realize what you are doing for yourself when you show me a possible way of getting my weapon back?" he demanded.
Gantry's lips became a fine straight line and he nodded.
"That's what made me walk the floor a few minutes ago; I was trying to find out if I were big enough. It's all right, Ebee; you go to it, and I'll throw up my job and run a foot-race with the sheriff, if I have to. Damn the job, anyway!" he finished petulantly. "I'm tired of being a robber for somebody else's pocket all the time!"
Blount sat down again and put his face in his hands. After a time he looked up to say: "I can't let you outbid me in the open market, Dick. You can't set the friendship peg any higher than I can."
Gantry crossed the room and recovered his top-coat and hat from the chair where he had thrown them.
"Don't you be a fool," he advised curtly. "There's a railroad down in Peru that is going bankrupt for the lack of a wide-awake, up-to-date traffic man. I've had the offer on my desk for a month, and I'm going to cable to-night. That lets you out, whether you do or don't. But if you've got the sense of a wooden Indian, you'll do as I've said—and do it pronto. Your time's mighty short, anyway. So long."