"No, and they won't catch them, with fellows like that on the committee. The crooks hang together and we don't. If I had my way that's just what they'd do—hang together. I'd start in by bending a limb over that rascal."
Phillips had attended several of these indignation meetings and, remembering that all of them bad proved purposeless, he went on toward the McCaskey brothers' tent. He and the McCaskeys were not the closest of friends, in spite of the fact that they had done him a favor—a favor, by the way, for which he had paid many times over—nevertheless, they were his most intimate acquaintances and he felt an urgent desire to tell them about his unusual experience. His desire to talk about the Countess Courteau was irresistible.
But when he entered the tent his greeting fell flat, for Joe, the elder
McCaskey, addressed him sharply, almost accusingly:
"Say, it's about time you showed up!"
"What's the matter?" Pierce saw that the other brother was stretched out in his blankets and that his head was bandaged. "Hello!" he cried. "What ails Jim? Is he sick?"
"Sick? Worse than sick," Joe grumbled. "That money of yours is to blame for it. It's a wonder he isn't dead."
"My money? How?" Phillips was both mystified and alarmed.
Jim raised himself in his blankets and said, irritably: "After this you can run your own pay-car, kid. I'm through, d'you hear?"
"Speak out. What's wrong?"
"Jim was stuck up, that's what's wrong. That's enough, isn't it? They bent a six-gun over his head and grabbed your coin. He's got a dent in his crust the size of a saucer!"