McGlory reflected that it was too late to follow Matt, who was probably doing his best to evade Levitt and the others who were hot on his trail. The cowboy reasoned that he could find his chum later, and that there could be no harm in listening to what the colonel had to say.
“Go on,” said he curtly.
“You’ll stay right where you are until I’m done?” asked the colonel.
“Yes.”
Billings drew back, dropped into a chair, and laid a friendly hand on the cowboy’s knee. His voice changed, sounding the depths of friendly interest and personal regard.
“Joe,” he remarked, “ever since your father took the One-way Trail I’ve sort of felt that I was responsible for your welfare. I knew your father mighty well—better than any one else in Tucson, I reckon—and him and me was bosom friends.”
McGlory had no personal knowledge on this point, but he was willing to take the colonel’s word for it.
“If I can do anything for Joe,” the colonel went on, “I says to myself that I won’t leave a stone unturned to do it. When the ‘Pauper’s Dream’ proposition came under my management I knew I had the chance I wanted to turn your way. I sold you a hundred shares of the stock at five dollars a share, and we went on to develop the claim.”
“And there wasn’t any more gold in the shaft,” spoke up the cowboy dryly, “than there was in a New England well.”
“That’s what everybody thought,” returned the colonel, “but I knew better.”