"He's a robber," barked Prebbles: "he's worse'n a robber. Yes, Murg's mainly concerned in what I've got to say."
"Then it will be well for Cameron to stay and hear it. He represents the government, and the government is after Murgatroyd. As for McGlory, here, he's my pard, and I have few secrets from him."
"All right, then," returned Prebbles. "It ain't a pleasant story I'm goin' to tell—leastways not for me. I've got to dig a few old bones out of my past life, and I know you won't think hard of me, seeing as how I belong to the army. It's a great thing to belong," and the old man seemed to forget what he was about to say, for a few moments, and fell to musing.
The young motorist, the cowboy, and the lieutenant waited patiently for Prebbles to pull himself together and proceed. The old clerk's haggard face proved that he had suffered much, and his three auditors had only kindness and consideration for him.
"It's like this," went on the old man suddenly, pulling himself together and drawing a hand over his eyes. "I was married, a long while ago—so long it seems as though it must have been in another world. I reckon I was happy, then, but it didn't last long. My wife died in two years and left me with a boy to raise. I wonder if you know how hard it is for a man like me to bring up a boy without a good woman to help? The job was too much for Prebbles. I did the best I knew how, on only thirty-five dollars a month, givin' the lad an education—or trying to, rather, for he never took much to books and schooling. He ran away from me when he was fifteen, an' I didn't see him again until last spring, when he was twenty-one.
"Six years had made a big difference in that boy, friends. He had gone his way, and it wasn't a good way, either. He was in Jimtown just a month, gamblin' and carryin' on, and then him and me had a quarrel. They were bitter words we passed, me accusin' him of dishonoring his dead mother and his father, by his ways, and him twitting me of bein' a failure in life just because I didn't have the nerve to be dishonest and go to grafting. I must have said things that were awful—I can't remember—but all I do know is that Newt hit me. He knocked me down, right in Murgatroyd's office. Murg was out, at the time, and Newt and me was alone there together. When I came to, Newt was gone."
Again was there a silence, the old clerk fingering a scar on the side of his cheek.
"How like a serpent's tooth is an ungrateful son," went on Prebbles. "And yet, Newt wasn't all to blame. I wasn't the right sort to bring up a high-spirited boy. I wasn't able to do my duty. He left four hundred in gamblin' debts, when he went away. Murgatroyd showed me the I O U's with Newt's name to 'em. That's why I kept right on workin' for Murg, when I knew he was a robber, and after I had joined the army. I've been taking up those I O U's. Three of 'em's been paid, and there's one more left; and here I've pulled the pin on myself before takin' up the other. I don't know what I'm going to do for a job," and a pathetic helplessness crept into the old clerk's voice, "but," and the voice strengthened grimly, "I started out on this thing and I'm going to see it through. What I want, is to make up with Newt. Lawsy, how that quarrel has worried me! I don't care about the way he hit me—he had the right, I guess—but I want to make up with him an' get him back."
The old man dropped his face in his hands. The other three looked at him sympathetically, and then exchanged significant glances.
"It isn't so hard, Prebbles," remarked Matt gently, "to advance the spark of friendship, and it ought to be more than easy in the case of you and your son."