“They are no more to me than they are to you,” replied Bob. “I shall drop them a line, telling them of father’s death, but beyond that, I shall have nothing to do with them. They can stay at their home in Indiana, and you and I will live on the ranch. You are all I have, and you must stick to me.”
Neither of the two boys slept a wink that night. Bob walked the floor, and George lay in bed, watching him through his half-closed eyes.
At half-past five they disposed of a hasty breakfast, said “good-by” to their landlady, and to a few friends among the students who had come to the depot to see them off, and then the fast express whirled them away toward St. Louis.
Up to this time, Bob Howard’s career had been rather an uneventful one; but now, capricious fate had taken him in hand, and ordered that during the next few months his life was to be crowded full of such excitement and adventure, such perils and startling surprises, as never before fell to the lot of any boy.
He was to be given ample opportunity for the exercise of the extraordinary nerve and pluck which he had exhibited while delivering his valedictory, but with this difference:
Then, he was in the presence of friends, who would willingly have made every allowance for him, had any forbearance or consideration on their part been necessary; but hereafter he was to be surrounded by enemies, who were already plotting his ruin, and who stood ready to take every possible advantage of him.
Let us follow that other telegram to its destination, and see who some of these enemies were.
CHAPTER XVII.
TWO NEW CHARACTERS.
“If my last half-hour’s experience isn’t enough to disgust any one with the dry-goods business, and everything connected with it, I wouldn’t say so.”
Arthur Howard suspended for a moment the distasteful work of rolling up the bolts of goods with which his counter was covered, and gazed after a party of ladies who had just gone out.