Webster smiled reminiscently and went on: “I'll never forget the day Billy challenged a big Cornish shift-boss that called him out of his name. The Cousin Jack could fight, too, but Billy walked around him like a cooper around a barrel, and when he finished, I fired the Cousin Jack and gave Billy his job!”
He chuckled softly at the remembrance. “Too bad!” he continued. “That boy had brains and grit and honour, and he shouldn't have held that trial against me. But Billy was young, I suppose, and he just couldn't understand my position. It takes the hard old years to impart common sense to a man, and I suppose Billy couldn't understand why I had to be true to my salt. He should have known I hadn't a leg to stand on when I took the stand for the prosecution—not a scintilla of evidence to present, except that the high-grade had been found in his assay office. Jerome, I curse the day I took that boy out from underground and put him in the Bonnie Claire assay office to learn the business. How could I know that the Holman gang had cached the stuff in his shack?”
“Well, it's too bad,” Jerome answered dully. He was quite willing that the subject of conversation should be changed. “I'm glad to get the right dope on the boy, anyhow. We might be able to hand him a good job to make up for the injustice. Have another drink?”
“Not until I read this letter. Now, who the dickens knew I was headed for Denver and the Engineers' Club? I didn't tell a soul, and I only arrived this morning.”
He turned to the last page to ascertain the identity of his correspondent, and his facial expression ran the gamut from surprise to a joy that was good to see.
It was a long letter, and John Stuart Webster read it deliberately. When he had read it once, he reread it; after which he sat in silent contemplation of the design of the carpet for fully a minute before reaching for the bell. A servant responded immediately.
“Bring me the time-tables of all roads leading to New Orleans,” he ordered, “—also a cable blank.”
Webster had reread the letter before the servant returned with the time-tables. He glanced through them. “Henry,” he announced, “your name is Henry, isn't it?”
“No, sir—George, sir.”
“Well, August, you go out to the desk, like a good fellow, and ask the secretary to arrange for a compartment for me to New Orleans on the Gulf States Limited, leaving at ten o'clock to-morrow night.” He handed the servant his card. “Now wait a minute until I write something.” He seized the cable blank, helped himself, uninvited, to Neddy Jerome's fountain pen, and wrote: