“Well, don’t leave yourself out, Putney.”
“As I said before, Mr. Weed saw the possibilities of this investment, and, not having sufficient funds of his own, he took forty thousand of the bank money, in order to take a third interest in the Panhandle Number 7 well, a Texas oil company. It promised enormous returns. Today he received a communication to the effect that at a depth of four thousand feet, they have struck nothing. The average depth of that field is much less.
“It puts my friend in a bad position. The depositors of this bank are not of a forgiving nature, and in the event of an embezzlement it is doubtful whether the law would ever have a chance to pronounce sentence upon Amos Weed.”
“They’d lynch him, eh?” asked Cloudy McGee heartlessly.
Amos shivered.
“I am doing my best to save my friend’s life,” continued Putney. “The forty thousand is gone. And the only way we can explain the loss is to have the bank robbed. You know how to do things like that, Mr. McGee. There is already a thousand dollar reward for your arrest; so another robbery won’t make much difference to you one way or the other.”
“Well?” queried McGee thoughtfully. “How much do I get?”
Ferdinand P. Putney did some mental arithmetic. He knew there was ten thousand dollars in the bank. It would be just as simple to make this a fifty thousand dollar robbery as a forty thousand dollar robbery—and there would be ten thousand to split between himself and Amos.
“Suppose,” he said, “that we give you a thousand dollars. You don’t need to pull off a regular robbery; just come in the front door, fire a few shots, run out the back door, get on your horse and beat it. As you go through we’ll hand you the one thousand.”
McGee shook his head quickly. “You might hand me a package of nails.”