“I’m real enough to be able to shake hands, Ritson,” returned our hero, dismounting, and going up to his former friend, who suffered him to grasp the hand that had been on the point of taking his life. “But can it be true, that I really find you a—”
“It is true, Charlie Brooke; quite true—but while you see the result, you do not see, and cannot easily understand, the hard grinding injustice that has brought me to this. The last and worst blow I received this very night. I have urgent need of money—not for myself, believe me—and I came down to David’s store, at some personal risk, I may add, to receive payment of a sum due me for acting as a cow-boy for many months. The company, instead of paying me—”
“Yes, I know; I heard it all,” said Charlie.
“You were only shamming sleep, then?”
“Yes; I knew you at once.”
“Well, then,” continued Buck Tom (as we shall still continue to style him), “the disappointment made me so desperate that I determined to rob you—little thinking who you were—in order to help poor Shank Leather—”
“Does Shank stand in urgent need of help?” asked Charlie, interrupting.
“He does indeed. He has been very ill. We have run out of funds, and he needs food and physic of a kind that the mountains don’t furnish.”
“Does he belong to your band, Ritson?”
“Well—nearly; not quite!”