"Me? Gee! Say, if them ten thousand dollars had wafted my way I'd have set this city crazy drunk fer a week. No, sir," he added, with a coldly gloomy shake of the head. "That's jest about the pain I'm sufferin' right now. Some mighty slick aleck's helped hisself to them dollars, an' I don't know who—nor does anybody else, 'cep' him who paid 'em."
Bud realized the man's shameless earnestness, but passed it by. He was seeking information. It was what he and Jeff had come for. The manner of this man was coldly callous, and he knew that every word he uttered was a lash applied to the bruised soul of the man by the window. Irresistible sympathy made him turn about.
"Here's your lager, Jeff," he said, in his easiest fashion. He had no desire that Ju should be made aware of the trouble that Jeff was laboring under.
Jeff replied at once. His readiness and even cheerfulness of manner surprised Bud. But it relieved him as well.
"Bully!" he cried, as he came back to the bar. "I was just gettin' a look around at the—city." He turned to Ju with his shadowy smile which almost broke Bud's heart. "Quite a place, eh?"
"Place? Wal, it's got points I allow. So's hell ef you kin look at it right." Ju lit a cigar and hid nearly half of it in his capacious mouth. "I'd say," he went on, with a certain satisfaction, "ther's more mush-headed souses in this lay out to the square yard than I've ever heard tell of in any other city. Ef it wa'an't that way I couldn't see myself wastin' a valuable life lookin' at grass, hearin' talk of grass, smellin' grass, an' durned nigh eatin' grass. I tell you right here it takes me countin' my legs twice a day to keep me from the delusion I got four, an' every time I got to shake my head at some haf soused bum who's needin' credit I'm scared to death my blamed ears'll start right in flappin'. Why, yes, I guess it's some place—if you don't know no other."
Bud was eager to get to the end of the task he had assumed for his friend. He wanted the facts, all the facts as far as they were available, of the terrible enactments in that valley of his early youth.
"An' who antied the price?" he demanded.
"Who? Why, the President of the Western Union Cattle Breeders'
Association—Dug McFarlane."
"And you don't know who—accepted it?"