“I have got just a hundred dollars in money that I saved from my work at herding cattle,” said he. “Will ten dollars apiece do you?”
“You had better give us twenty while you are about it,” said Kelly, as Claude drew his money out of his vest pocket. “If we get the twenty thousand dollars——”
“You must get it,” said Claude earnestly. “In fact, don’t undertake to steal that money unless you can get it. And then you want to watch out for the police. When will you attempt it?”
“To-night, if we get the chance,” said Hayward. “But we may have to go up to Fort Scully with them. You go up with Kelly and he will show you where his room is, and you can go there and wait until we come back.”
All the way to the corner, where Hayward took leave of them, they talked about the robbery, and Claude again impressed upon Hayward the dire calamity that would happen to him if they allowed Thompson to put his hands behind him. Hayward grinned and kept on to his own room, while Kelly and Claude kept on to Kelly’s room, and by the time they reached it Kelly had thought up another method of raising money out of Carl.
“I have several checks in my pocket on different banks, and I will make one of them out for a hundred dollars or so,” said he, “and perhaps I can borrow——”
“You had better let that out,” said Claude hastily. “Whenever you begin to talk money to him, he’ll shut up and go away from you.”
“Of course I want to try it merely to see if he has the funds,” said Kelly. “I don’t care anything about a hundred dollars while he has so much more.”
“And there is another thing that you must look out for,” said Claude. “I had almost forgotten to mention it. Mr. Morphy told him this morning not to make friends with anybody. If you behave at all friendly with him, and act as though you had seen him before, the fat will all be in the fire.”
“That old Morphy posted him on a good many scrapes, didn’t he?” said Kelly, with a wink that spoke volumes. “I can tell how to manage him when I see him.”