“I do, and I aint afraid of them, nuther. I guess I can get a pistol out as quick as he can. Just keep your eye on him and we’ll see what he is going to do.”
The days grew into weeks and the weeks into months, and still Coyote Bill stayed around the house. In fact he didn’t say a word about going since he was settled there. He seemed to think that the man he was in search of was somebody he couldn’t reach, and he was content to remain where he was. Mr. Davenport kept his eye out at all times, and the only thing he found against Bill was when he caught him trying to pick his desk. He came suddenly into the room where Bill was at work, and the position he caught him in was enough to condemn him. But Bill was equal to it. He greeted him with a good-morning, and proceeded to tumble up his bed as though nothing was the matter.
“Why do you have this door shut?” enquired Mr. Davenport, with more sternness than he had ever thrown into his words. “I generally leave it open.”
“I found it shut when I came in, sir,” said Bill. “I always make it a point to leave things as I find them. It’s a fine day outside, sir.”
“Yes, of course it is a fine day here in this country,” said Mr. Davenport, who was wishing every day that it would rain. “We never see any clouds here.”
Things went on in this way until we came there, and for once Mr. Davenport forgot himself and took us into his confidence. I had noticed ’Rastus Johnson, and I didn’t think there was anything strange about it, except that he seemed to sympathize with me, because I had lost my cattle. But, then, that was something that fell to everybody down there, and besides I had more than made my loss good. Finally, the time came when I bearded the lion in his den, and, prompted by Elam, called him by his right name. Of course he was thunderstruck, but I think I did the best thing I could under the circumstances. He made up his mind to steal the pocket-book at once, and boldly proposed the thing to me as if I had agreed to “become one of them.” I got out of it somehow, and that was the night that he and Elam got into that “scrap.” He went off, as I expected he would, and I did not see him again until he and Clifford Henderson came to the ranch to hunt up the missing pocket-book. You saw how he treated me while he was there. Tom Mason’s luck came in; he found the pocket-book, and I hadn’t seen Bill since. And now Henderson was gone, and I concluded that with all those men watching us we couldn’t reach Austin without a fight. But we had ten good men, and they were all good shots. And I saw that others felt the same way. Well, let it come. I was sure of one of them, anyway.
CHAPTER XIV.
PROVING THE WILL.
When Clifford Henderson turned his nag and galloped away from us, he was about the maddest man I ever saw mounted on horseback. When I said away from “us,” I mean from the three or four men whom he had been trying to induce to buy his cattle, and Tom Mason and myself. He had good reason to be angry. He had come out to the ranch while we were there; and although he had things all his own way, and one of the men who were with him had searched us to prove that we didn’t have the pocket-book, he had hardly got out of reach of the house when Tom had it in his possession. That was as neat a piece of strategy as I ever heard of, this finding the pocket-book after he had got through looking for it, and I didn’t wonder that he felt sore over it. He meditated about it as he rode along, and the more he thought about it, the more nearly overcome with rage was he.
“To think that that little snipe should have gone and found the pocket-book after I had got done looking for it—that’s what bangs me!” he exclaimed, shaking his fists in the air. “No wonder they call him Lucky Tom. But there is just this much about it: the pocket-book is not going to do him any good. I’ll go and see Bill about it, and then I’ll go to Austin, find the surrogate before he does, and challenge the will. By that means I shall put him to some trouble before he can handle the stock as he has a mind to.”