"There isn't one," was the answer. "Now that my work is finished, I see no further need of hiding the fact that, while you knew me as Adams, my name is—Boone."
Mackay still stared at him, then laughed a little, as it were in admiration, but silently. "I'm understanding a good deal now—and that was why ye helped run yon thief down. Well, I'll take your parole, and I'm thinking ye will have little trouble since the prosecutor's gone."
CHAPTER XXX
THE LAST TOAST
Lane troubled us no further, and there came a time when those who had suffered under him, and at last assisted in his overthrow, would laugh boisterously at my narrative of his hasty exit from the prairie with the troopers hard upon his heels. They appeared to consider the description of how, with characteristic audacity, he bade us an ironical farewell one cold morning from the doorway of a lonely ranch an appropriate finale, and bantered the sergeant upon his tardiness. The latter would answer them dryly that the Dominion was well quit of Lane.
Some time, however, passed before this came about, and meanwhile winter closed in on the prairie. It was, save for one uncertainty which greatly troubled me, a tranquil winter—for I had, in addition to promising schemes for the future, a balance in the bank—but not wholly uneventful. Before the first snow had fallen, men with theodolites and compasses invaded Crane Valley, and left inscribed posts behind them when they passed. This was evidently a preliminary survey; but it showed the railroad was coming at last, although, as the men could tell us nothing, there remained the somewhat important question whether it would follow that or an alternative route.
Also, a month or two later, Thorn and Steel sought speech with me, the former looking almost uncomfortable when his companion said: "I've been talking with Haldane about taking up my old place, and don't see how to raise the money, or feel very keen over it. We never did much good there since my father went under. The fact is, we two pull well together, and you have the longest head. Won't you run both places and make me a kind of foreman with a partner's interest?"
The suggestion suited me in many ways, but bearing in mind what might be possible, I saw a difficulty. "I dare say we might make a workable arrangement, and I couldn't find a better partner; but haven't you Sally's interests to consider?" I said.
Steel smiled in an oracular fashion. "That's Tom's business," he said, with a gesture, which, though I think it was involuntary, suggested that he felt relieved of a load. "Sally is a daisy, and I've done my best for her; but though there's nobody got more good points, I don't mind allowing she was a blame big handful now and then. Of course, we are all friends here!"
"We won't be if you start in apologizing for Sally," broke in the stalwart Thorn; and as I glanced at his reddened face, a light dawned on me.