“The law will grab the crooks, maybe. But your money will be tied up along with ’em. We are strangers out here, Judge Kingsley. And you don’t want the notoriety of the thing. Remember, you bought a gold brick!” He winced, but it wasn’t on account of the shears! “Just getting those crooks into jail won’t help your case,” I insisted. “We haven’t much time to turn around in. The fifteenth of April isn’t very far away. I reckon it’s going to mean getting ten thousand dollars in ten days!” He cringed. “The law is too slow and careful for us just now! They pulled that money off by a trick. We must get it back by—— Well, I don’t know just yet how we’ll get it back—but it won’t be by any law business.”
“Do you intend to rob them and mix me into more trouble?”
“I’d rob ’em in a minute if I could do it and get away,” I told him, calmly. And then, because he was getting excited, I advised him to keep his jaw still so that the shears might not slip and cut him.
When the clipping was done I got my little kit out of my bag and got ready to shave him; there was a tin dish full of water in the corner of the room. Of course he was glad to have the stubble I had left under his chin scraped off, and submitted quietly. However, I knew my real tussle with Judge Zebulon Kingsley was just ahead of me.
On the wall there was a little mirror with glass so wavy that it made a human face seem like the physog of a baboon. I pulled it down and showed the judge his countenance with his whiskers off.
“You see it doesn’t change your looks very much, after all, Judge. Your beard was all under your chin instead of on your face.” I didn’t want to jump him too suddenly.
“If you have changed my looks as much as that glass represents, you’ve done a good job,” he said, dryly. It was the first time I had ever heard anything like humor from him, and I was cheered and made bolder—so bold that I came right out with it!
“I’ll have to change your appearance just a bit more, Judge. I know how to do it, for I did it once in my own case.”
I uncorked the bottle of gum. But when I started toward him he did not depend on his hands for defense—he put up his foot and pushed me away. I protested.
“There’s no use going half-way in this thing, sir. It only means a mustache for you out of your own beard.”