"My pal and the others made up their minds they'd lynch Piccadilly; they wouldn't give him the benefit of the doubt—for it wasn't certain that the girl hadn't killed herself. . . . Well, I went to Piccadilly, and give him the benefit. He left, and skipped the rope. Not, p'r'aps, that he ought to hev got away, but once he'd showed me a letter from his mother,—he was drunk too, at the time,—and I remembered when my brother Rodney was killed in the Black Hills, and how my mother took it; so I give him the tip to travel quick."
He paused and rested. Then presently continued: "Now, Padre, I've got four hundred dollars—the most I ever had at one time in my life. And I'd like it to go to my old pal—though we had that difference, and parted. I guess we respect each other about the same as we ever did. And I wish you'd write it down so that the thing would be municipal."
Roscoe took pencil and paper and said: "What's his name, Phil?"
"Sam—Tonga Sam."
"But that isn't all his name?"
"No, I s'pose not, but it's all he ever had in general use. He'd got it because he'd been to the Tonga Islands and used to yarn about them. Put 'Tonga Sam, Phil Boldrick's Pal at Danger Mountain, ult'—add the 'ult,' it's c'rrect.—That'll find him. And write him these words, and if you ever see him say them to him—'Phil Boldrick never had a pal that crowded Tonga Sam.'"
When the document was written, Roscoe read it aloud, then both signed it,
Roscoe guiding the battered hand over the paper.
This done, there was a moment's pause, and then Phil said: "I'd like to be in the open. I was born in the open—on the Madawaska. Take me out, Padre."
Roscoe stepped to the door, and silently beckoned to Devlin and myself.
We carried him out, and put him beside a pine tree.
"Where am I now?" he said. "Under the white pine, Phil." "That's right. Face me to the north."