“I wish,” said Matt, “that I’d had the Hempstead doctor look at you.”
“Look at me? Well, I reckon he did. He looked at me as though he thought I was a sandbagger. And he came pretty near having it right, at that.”
“You know what I mean, Joe.”
“Sure, I do. But we didn’t have time. We may be late for the meeting as it is. The colonel has showed his bullion, and flashed that affidavit about its coming from the ‘Pauper’s Dream’ as the result of a week’s run, and perhaps the syndicate has been stampeded. We may be too late.”
“We’ll not be too late to go on record,” declared Matt.
“Tell me this, pard,” said the cowboy: “Why were you piking for New York at the time you met the runabout backing down the road with no one aboard?”
“I had started for the meeting in Random & Griggs’ office,” said Matt.
“You were going there just the same, eh?”
“Of course.”
“While I was doing everything I could to help the colonel get me into trouble, you were still hustling to keep me out of it?”