The man stood considering it, looking as grave as a Scotch capitalist. Suddenly he jerked his head.
Over a greasy supper, in a tent away out on the edge of things, they arranged the details of their plot against Hun Shanklin’s sure thing. What scheme the doctor had in mind he kept to himself, but he told his co-conspirator how to carry himself, and, with six small bills and some paper, he made up as handsome a gambler’s roll as could have been met with in all Comanche that night. Out of the middle of its alluring girth the corner of a five-dollar note showed, and around the outside Slavens bound a strip of the red handkerchief upon which the little man had mopped his sweating brow. It looked bungling enough for any sheep-herder’s hoard, and fat enough to tempt old Hun Shanklin to lead its possessor on.
After he had arranged it, the doctor pushed it across to his admiring companion.
“No,” said the little man, shaking his head; “you keep it. You may be a crook, but I’ll trust you with it. Anyhow, if you are a crook, I’m one too, I reckon.”
“Both of us, then, for tonight,” said the doctor, hooking the smoked goggles behind his ears.
CHAPTER X
HUN SHANKLIN’S COAT
Several sheep-herders, who had arrived late to dip into the vanishing diversions of Comanche, and a few railroad men to whom pay-day had just supplied a little more fuel to waste in its fires, were in Hun Shanklin’s tent when Dr. Slavens and his backer arrived.
Shanklin was running off about the same old line of talk, for he was more voluble than inventive, and never varied it much. It served just as well as a new lecture for every occasion, for the memory of suckers is even shorter than their judgment.