“That sure is interesting. You show us a way to meet her, Sheriff, and we’ll show ourselves grateful,” said Sleepy.
That evening Sleepy Spears drove a dusty roadster down the main street of McMullen. He saw the train come in and saw the sheriff meet Pappy George Bilney, a little wisp of a white-bearded man.
Sleepy then drew up to the curb in front of a drug store with a flourish and shut off the motor. As he turned to climb out, his gaze fell on the face of a tall, thin, stooping fellow with drooping brown mustachios. As if by some hypnotic influence, the stranger’s close-set eyes rose to meet the flyer’s gaze, then dropped. The man walked on.
“That’s that foreman from Barnes City!” murmured Sleepy. “Must ’ave just got out of jail, if old man Shaler did what he said he was going to do after this bird’s scheme to tar and feather poor old Correll. I wonder what he might be doing here?”
A like mental query regarding Spears was arousing fear in the mind of the “bird”—Cal Buchanan, as he called himself. For Cal Buchanan, being a coyote by nature instead of a wolf, had within the last few hours formulated a wolf’s plan to resuscitate his fallen fortunes, and when a coyote essays a wolf’s role he is likely to shy at a shadow.
As he lounged along the lively street, his small eyes roved constantly, seeing nothing but mental images. Girls and women whose clothes would not have been out of place on the leading thoroughfares of the largest cities; trimly dressed men along with others in cowboy boots and flannel shirts; here a store window that might have been transplanted from Manhattan next to a display of ornate saddles and lariats; a five-thousand-dollar limousine passing a hitching-rack where drooping cow-ponies awaited their owners—all were vague to him as he remained immersed in his plans.
Sleepy Spears had been farthest from his thoughts until the square, sunburnt countenance had appeared with all the effect of a sudden and unwelcome vision.
His thoughts turned back to his experience with Spears six months before. While drunk, he had visited the Barnes City fair, where Spears and Al Johnson, from Donovan Field, were giving flying exhibitions. Then had come that row with Correll, Spears’s mechanic, and the dream of tar-and-feathering Correll with the help of three confederates.
In a remote cabin the plan was working well, and the four men were just ready to strip Correll, when a human tornado in the form of Spears had burst in the door. From that time on, events were rather vague in Buchanan’s mind. Later he had learned that Spears, learning of the plot too late to overtake the hazing party by automobile, had made a parachute jump at night from Al Johnson’s airplane in order to reach Correll in time.
Was there any possibility that Spears, recognizing him, could interfere with the scheme that he had in mind? Nervous as a cat, he finally arose, leaving his food, paid his check, and walked out. Spears or no Spears, his mind was made up. There did not seem to be any reason to believe that the flyer could possibly get on to the scheme he had in mind. And he was desperate.