Plunkett whistled softly.
“You can’t get out of town any too quick for your personal safety, Clymer. Arson is a serious charge to have brought against you, and if convicted would mean anywhere from ten to fifteen years in the State prison.”
“Yes, I realize that. But there is no use now in crying over spilled milk. I’m going out to Montana to try and get possession of that copper mine, and what I want to know is, Are you with me? This is my plan.”
Otis Clymer produced the faded red pocketbook which belonged to Gideon Prawle, discoursed glowingly as to the exceptionally rich quality of the copper specimens brought from the mine by the prospector, and explained how he believed that a small amount of money judiciously invested in the person of Jim Sanders would secure them the ownership of the mine, as the option held by Prawle being in his (Clymer’s) possession it could not be produced to complete the original bargain.
“Five hundred dollars ought to do the business for us,” concluded Otis, eagerly. “Prawle, if he survives the drug I gave him, will be left out in the cold, and you and I will come into a mint of money when we sell our right and title to the mine to capitalists who know a good thing when they see it.”
Plunkett was a cautious man as a rule—a virtue which kept him out of difficulties many a time; but the arguments advanced by Clymer seemed convincing, and at the same time excited his cupidity.
The two men talked over the scheme until daylight, and finally came to an agreement satisfactory to both.
Arrangements being completed, Clymer packed a grip with such articles as he considered indispensable and left the Plunkett House to catch a freight train which passed through Sackville at five o’clock.
Two days afterward, Plunkett himself vanished from town, leaving his establishment in charge of his wife.