“No,” says DeLancey. “I should like, however, to hear how you found him.”
“Another report, eh!” says I. “All right, Mr. Cathaway, I’ll size him up for you.”
“But chiefly,” he goes on, “I shall depend upon your discretion not to mention my brother’s whereabouts to anyone else. As an aid to that discretion,” says he, digging up his roll and sortin’ out some tens, “I am prepared to——”
“Ah, button ’em back!” says I. “Who do you think you’re dealin’ with, anyway?”
“Why,” says he, flushin’ up, “I merely intended——”
“Well, forget it!” says I. “I ain’t runnin’ any opposition to the Black Hand, and as for whether I leak out where your brother is or not, that’s something you got to take chances on. Pull up there, Mr. Chauffeur! This is where I start to walk.”
And say, you could put his name on all the hospitals and orphan asylums in the country; but I never could see it again without growin’ warm under the collar. Bah! Some of these perfectly good folks have a habit of gettin’ on my nerves. All the way down to Clam Creek I kept tryin’ to wipe him off the slate, and I’d made up my mind to dodge Brother Bob, if I had to sleep in the woods.
So as soon as I hops off the train I gets my directions and starts to tramp over this tract that Duke Borden was plannin’ on blowin’ some of his surplus cash against. And say, if anybody wants an imitation desert, dotted with scrub pine and fringed with salt marshes, that’s the place to go lookin’ for it. There’s hundreds of square miles of it down there that nobody’s usin’, or threatenin’ to.
Also I walked up an appetite like a fresh landed hired girl. I was so hungry that I pikes straight for the only hotel and begs ’em to lead me to a knife and fork. For a wonder, too, they brings on some real food, plain and hearty, and I don’t worry about the way it’s thrown at me.
Yon know how it is out in the kerosene district. I finds myself face to face with a hunk of corned beef as big as my two fists, boiled Murphies, cabbage and canned corn on the side, bread sliced an inch thick, and spring freshet coffee in a cup you couldn’t break with an ax. Lizzie, the waitress, was chewin’ gum and watchin’ to see if I was one of them fresh travelin’ gents that would try any funny cracks on her.