“Damn you!” he snorted. “Then you’ll get your dose of Ike Dawlin. I won’t eat nor sleep till I find him. And he’ll burn up the road getting to you. Ike Dawlin, eh? You don’t dare to come on!”
“Keep your eye on me. But if you can dig up Ike Dawlin in these parts come around and I’ll hand you a present—maybe I’ll hand back your guns!”
Mr. Dragg by that time was not a pleasant companion and I got up and went back through the train. He started after me, and then thought better of it. Probably he reflected that he had me either way. If I got frightened and went back he would be well rid of me as a rival in his scheme; if I came on he had Dawlin and the rest—and I surely believed his word about Dawlin’s whereabouts. I did not know whether I was mighty glad that my chase was being guided in such handsome manner or was so dreadfully scared by the prospects just ahead of me that I was half minded to jump off the train; my feelings were very much mixed up.
However, when I met the gloomy stare of Zebulon Kingsley I grinned—I couldn’t help it. There was a lot of grim humor in the situation.
“Been raking in more dirty money, I suppose,” he snarled, mistaking the nature of my smile.
“No, I have turned a better trick, sir. I have just met up with the most obliging chap I have found in a long time. He knows the man who fooled you into buying that gold brick. He is going to find him for us!”
“Bah!” sneered the judge. “This is only a wild, crazy, helter-skelter chase for—”
“I’m telling you the truth, sir! I never saw a man so enthusiastic about a kindness for strangers! He just told me that he wouldn’t eat or sleep till he had found that fellow. Why, he is so headlong about the thing that I’m afraid he’ll find the chap before we’re ready to meet him in proper style!”
“Hump!” sneered the judge, not taking a mite of stock in me.
I walked away and sat down by myself. There was sad truth in what I just told Kingsley. I was not ready to meet Ike Dawlin and “Peacock” Pratt.