Six months in the Barnes City jail had been his sentence for the attempted tar-and-feather soirée, At the expiration of his term, three days before, he had been left under no misapprehension as to whether his room was preferable to his company in Barnes City. He had drifted aimlessly toward the border, with vague plans of going into Mexico. A hundred dollars was his capital, and to his craven heart the future loomed dark—until that spry little old man, Bilney, who had boarded the train at Willett, made friends with him, and gave him an opportunity to recuperate his fortunes.
George Bilney had prattled proudly during the whole seventy-five-mile trip from Willett. He kept a general store at Willett, though it was only a tiny station and his nearest customers lived six miles away. His main source of profit, however, was his ranch business. Six ranches, ranging from six to fifty thousand acres, did all their business with him, because of the convenience of having him do the buying, and because he kept a large and assorted stock from which a hurry call for anything from tools to feed or worm-salve could always be filled. Warehouses full of feed, tools, wire, lumber, provisions, and all the other supplies necessary for the modern ranch testified to the volume of his business. As a matter of fact, his store and its other buildings actually formed the so-called town of Willett.
His daughter, home for her college vacation, his dead wife, his boyhood in New England—the little storekeeper had told it all to the sympathetic Buchanan, and among all the details one other thing, which had set that coyote’s heart to thumping as he heard it. For it appeared that most of the customers of the store paid their bills on the last day of the month—“It takes quick turnovers for cash to run my business,” Bilney had said. And the money was not sent to McMullen until the next morning, on the one daily train that ran south.
Bilney had said that he was returning on the ten o’clock train that evening. Buchanan could slip into a berth, ride to the next station north of Willett, which was twenty-five miles, hire a horse, and ride back in the evening of the next day. Bilney had given him a cordial invitation to drop in for a meal at any time.
It would be absurdly simple. If the money was in a safe, he could force the old man to open it; then bind up him and his daughter, cut the telephone wires, perhaps leave a note on the front of the store saying that the owner would not be back until next day, to give him twelve hours’ respite. In that time, by hard riding on the excellent saddle-horse that Bilney had bought for his daughter, Buchanan could make the border. Then for an easy life in Mexico.
Bilney, on the next evening, was reading the San Antonio Express by the light of a big white-shaded kerosene lamp, while Cissy, the huge negro woman who was his housekeeper, prepared supper. On the other side of the table a tall girl with a mass of black hair and a sweet face, was fondling a bull-terrier puppy.
Buchanan paused outside the window and took in the scene. The old man lived in the rear of his store, which was now closed, so Buchanan knocked on the back door.
Bilney opened it, and for a moment peered nearsightedly through his glasses, set half-way down his nose.
“Well, well, come right in, my boy. How did you get up here so quick?” he said.
“I got me a job at the Blackburne ranch to-day, and I just thought I’d drop in t’ say howdy,” returned Buchanan, entering hesitantly.