"Your brain's all right," said Connie. "Just sit down and light your pipe, and forget you're mad, and listen while I explain."
Hurley sank slowly into his chair: "Sure, jist fergit Oi'm mad. Jist set by quiet an' let ye ate th' doughnut ye shwoiped off th' cook. Don't say nawthin' whoilst ye an' Slue Fut an' the Syndicate steals th' whole outfit. Mebbe if Oi'd take a little nap, ut wid be handier fer yez." The man's words rolled in ponderous sarcasm. Lon Camden arose and fumbled in his turkey. A moment later he tendered the boss a small screw-corked flask.
"I know it's again' orders in the woods, boss. But I ain't a drinkin' man—only keep this in case of accident. Mebbe a little nip now would straighten you out."
Hurley waved the flask aside: "No, Oi'm off thot stuff fer good! Ut done me har-rm in me younger days—but ut kin do me no more. Av Oi ain't going crazy, Oi don't nade ut. Av Oi am, ut's betther to be crazy an' sober, thin crazy an' drunk. Go on, b'y. Ye was goin' to mention somethin', Oi believe—an' av me name's Jake Hurley, ut betther be a chinful. In the first place, what business ye got wid contracks, an' warrants, an-nyhow?"
"In the first place," grinned the boy, "I'm a partner of Waseche Bill, and one of the owners of this outfit. Here are the papers to show it." While Hurley studied the papers, Connie proceeded: "We got your report, and then a letter from Mike Gillum saying that you were in the pay of the Syndicate——"
Hurley leaped to his feet: "Moike Gillum says Oi wuz in the pay of th' Syndicate! He's a dhirty——"
"Yes, yes—I know all about that. Slue Foot is the man who is in the pay of the Syndicate—and he borrowed your name." Hurley subsided, somewhat, but his huge fists continued to clench and unclench as the boy talked. "So I came down to see what the trouble was. It didn't take me long, after I had been with you for a while, to find out that you are square as a die—and that Slue Foot is as crooked as the trail of a snake. I pretended to throw in with him, and he let me in on the cut-shading—and later on the big steal—the scheme they worked on you last winter, that turned a twenty-thousand-dollar profit into a fourteen-thousand-dollar loss. When I got onto his game, I asked for a leave of absence and went down and closed the deal with the Syndicate—or rather, I let Heinie Metzger and von Kuhlmann close a deal with me. I had doped it all out that, if Metzger believed Slue Foot could prevent the delivery of part of the logs, he'd offer most anything for the whole eight million, because he knew he would never have to pay it, providing he could get the figure way down on anything less than eight million. So I stuck out for fifty dollars a thousand on the eight million, and he pretended it was just tearing his heart out; at the same time I let him get me down to ten dollars a thousand on the short cut—And we don't care how little he offered for that, because we're going to deliver the whole cut!"
Hurley was staring into the boy's face in open-mouthed incredulity. "An' ye mane to say, ye wint to Minneapolis an' hunted up Heinie Metzger hisself, an' let him make a contrack that'll lose him three or foor hundred thousan' dollars? Heinie Metzger—the shrewdest lumberman in the wor-rld. Th' man that's busted more good honest min than he kin count! Th' man that howlds th' big woods in the holler av his hand! An' ye—a b'y, wid no hair on his face, done thot? Done ut deliberate—figgered out befoor hand how to make Heinie Metzger bate hisself—an' thin went down an' done ut?"
Connie laughed: "Sure, I did. Honestly, it was so easy it is a shame to take the money. Heinie Metzger ain't shrewd—he just thinks he is—and people have taken him at his own valuation. I told Saginaw the whole thing, before I went down. Didn't I, Saginaw?"
"You sure did. But I didn't think they was any such thing as puttin' it acrost. An' they's a whole lot more yet the kid's did, boss. Fer one thing, he's got them three I. W. W. 's locked in jail. An'——"