"Put her right thar, Chalkeye," says he; "it's mighty hard at times to stick to the rules of the game. It's so easy to go crooked that it takes a man to play straight—and you'll play straight. Adios!"
All night my mind was at ease, and when day broke again we were into the Superstitious Mountains. So I led Curly down towards Echo Spring, and gave the long yell to my boys where they lay in camp.
CHAPTER XXV
A MILLION DOLLARS RANSOM
In giving my own account of this unpleasantness which happened between the Du Chesnay and Ryan families I've just grabbed Truth by the tail and tried to stay right with her. But Truth runs swift, and raises plenty dust of lies around her heels, so, maybe, whirling along I missed good facts. Happens I've been poorly provided with one eye and a lot of prejudice to see the trail ahead; likely I've not been the only party interested. Anyways, outsiders could watch the stampede without getting choked with dust.
Now these conclusions struck me abrupt like a bat in the eye when I sat down to rest in camp at Echo Spring. Before leaving Grave City, while thinking of other worries, I had caught a copy of a local paper, stuffed the same in my rear pocket, and disremembered having such possessions. I never thought of it until my tigers, hungering for news, caught sight of the bulging paper and rushed my camp to grab. Then I unfolded the Weekly Obituary to these boys, all setting around on their tails and pointing their ears for instruction. I read to them about a certain Chalkeye Davies, who seemed to be a most astonishing outrageous villain, performing simultaneous crimes in several places at once. My tigers purred for more.
Then came a whole page of revelations concerning "the kidnapped Crœsus," otherwise styled "the stolen millionaire" and the "brigands' prey." It was clearly proved that the Chalkeye villain, Jim du Chesnay—described as "a broken-down swell"—and Captain McCalmont had joined together in purloining Michael Ryan and hiding him up in a cave, the place being well known to the authorities. This cave was inaccessible by land and water, guarded with machine-guns, and supplied with all modern conveniences, especially searchlights. "Our special representative" had been there, "but declined to give particulars for fear of driving the bandits to still more desperate measures."
Then came the Weekly Obituary gallery of fine portraits. We knew them all well, because they were served up frequent to represent murderers, politicians, actresses, preachers, scandalous British duchesses, and other notorious persons. Now they represented McCalmont, Curly, Chalkeye, Jim, Michael Ryan, Mrs. Michael, and old Mrs. Ryan. The Weekly Obituary said it was wishful with these identifications to assist the ends of justice.
After this the next page was all quotations from leading papers throughout the Republic, proving how plumb depraved the robbers were, how wicked it was to purloin the rich and good out of their private cars, and how the Federal Government ought to act in this shocking catastrophe. The New York papers just burned themselves with wrath because Michael's present engagements prevented him a whole lot from attending to railroad business. His financial combine was due to collapse complete unless he took hold at once.