“I will just as soon as I get to my hotel. Which way is the Planter’s House from here?”
“Go down this street to the next corner, and then go five blocks. Good luck to you!”
“That thing is done easy enough, but the next policeman that stops me will be worse,” said Henderson, continuing on his way. “He’ll say there is a signature waiting for you that I want you to explain, and how will I get out of it? Well, we’ll wait until that time comes. I must do the best I can to escape now.”
Henderson knew where the Planter’s House was as well as anybody, but he followed the policeman’s directions. By the time he reached his destination he was pretty well winded. He engaged a carriage at the door, paid his bill at the hotel, and saw his trunk perched up beside the driver.
“Go fast now, for I have not a minute to waste,” said Henderson. “Get me down there before that steamer sails and I will give you two dollars.”
In an hour more Henderson was snug in bed and listening to the puffing of the engines which were bearing him down the river. He had taken passage on a little boat that was bound for New Orleans and had the room all to himself. In spite of his joy over his escape he could not help feeling bitter toward Scanlan. Why had he signed that paper? Scanlan would be sure to be apprehended,—he couldn’t get away from that pistol,—and he would be searched at the police court, and the whole thing would come out against him.
“Never mind; he’s in a bad fix,” said Henderson, pounding a pillow into shape to fit his head. “And I don’t know but that I am in a worse one. I hope they will send him up so that I will never see him again. And then what will my friends think?”
Filled with such thoughts as these we may readily conceive that Henderson’s journey down the river was not a pleasant one, and it was only after they had left Cairo, and were fairly afloat for New Orleans, that he recovered his usual spirits. He remained in New Orleans for a single day, and then took passage for Galveston, from which place he went to Austin. He deposited his money there in the bank, secured a second rate boarding house, and settled down to see what the fates had in store for him.
“Thank goodness, I am a free man at last!” said Henderson. “I have not heard a word from St. Louis since I left there, but I only hope Scanlan has got his just dues. And here is the place Bob was going to come. Well, I’ll keep clear of him. I hope I may never hear of him again.”
As the years rolled by and nothing was heard about his attempted abduction of Bob, or of Scanlan either, Henderson began to think that the matter was forgotten. By behaving himself Henderson made many friends in Texas, for it is not always the good who have blessings showered upon them except in story books. He made an honest effort at reform, and it is possible that he might have succeeded if it hadn’t been for one thing. He was a speculator in cattle,—he never was known as anything else,—and he finally got into the habit of riding out on the prairie, taking no money with him, to see what he could buy. For Texas was a new State, we had only just got through the war with Mexico, and everybody who had any wrong done him, or had got into difficulty with his fellow-man, came to Texas to begin over again. Anyone, too, who found the law too strict for him in older communities, could come here and get out of the reach of it.