“What do you get a day for your best law work?”
“I don’t work by the day.” I wondered just how lawyers did work.
“Well, then, name your price for standing by me against the sharks
they’ll bring to try to beat me out. I don’t know anything about hiring
lawyers.”
“I’ll take half.” I thought that remark would send him hipering away.
My client’s face promptly showed the color of a ripe damson. He tried to
say something and merely clucked. After a struggle he managed to control
his temper and his voice. He leaned forward and clutched my knees. He
spoke low, for there were other passengers near, but the rasp in his
tones made up for any lack of emphasis.
“My name is Peter Dragg. If you have never heard of me, ask somebody
about me. Ask any one between Buffalo Hump and Cour d’Alene. I’ve had a
lot of practice in doing things to men who have got in my way. What I’ll
do to you if you don’t back up will put red rings around the moon.”
“Well, then, consider I’m discharged!”
“From what?”
“From my position as your lawyer.”
“I haven’t hired you.”
“Then suppose you cast off those grappling-hooks,” I suggested, for his
clutch on my knees hurt my flesh and my feelings. When he did not let
go, I reached down slowly, grabbed his hands and began to pry.
Not a man about us noticed what was going on--the newspaper that I had
dropped covered our hands. It was tense and silent testing out which was
the better man in that clinch. He had a handsome little grip of his own,
I’ll admit, but I had diver’s hooks at the ends of my arms and I bested
him.
“I quit!” he growled, after a time. “Leave go!”
“Listen,” said I. “I’m not a lawyer.”
“You lie!”
“I _did_ lie, but not now. You pass on about your business.”
“It isn’t my own business any longer--I have put you wise to it.”
“But I’m forgetting it. I have plenty else on my mind.”
“You don’t get past with that kind of bluff,” he sneered. “You intend to
beat me to it, but you can’t.”
“Look here, I’m coming across square with you,” I protested. “You came
and jammed a lot of information on to me. I didn’t ask for it.”
“I say you coaxed it out of me. Now you’ve got to come in and give me
law on a decent lay. If you don’t I’ll do you!”
“I’m not a _lawyer_.”
“I know better! You’re tied up with me--you’ve got to stick to me.”
“But I have important matters which will take all my time.”
“I’ll take your time from now on.”
“Look here! I propose to go on and mind my own business!”
“Then you’re spoken for! I’ll tend to you before you get a chance to
butt in on _my_ business.”
He leaned back in his seat and pushed his coat aside, inviting my
attention by a downward glance.
He was packing a gun on each hip’.
“I’ll give you about ten minutes’ recess to think the thing over,” he
stated. “If you try to leave this train I’ll be after you!”
He went down the car, turned over a scat, and faced me.
I was in a fine way to attend to the business of Judge Kingsley and
myself! Whether I went into that fellow’s scheme or did not go in, it
seemed all the same. In those days, according to what I had read, they
were very careless about handling firearms in some parts of the West,
and it looked to me as if I had dropped into one of those sections.
He took another pull from his flask. The uncertainty of what that
intoxicated gentleman might feel impelled to do to me next, in the
confusion of his fuddlement, made the shivers run up and down my back.
In the ten anxious minutes that passed he pulled that flask four times,
and every time he reached for it I made a motion to dodge under the
seat. The damnable part of it was that nobody in the car was paying the
least attention to us.
Then he came tottering up the aisle and lurched into the seat in front
of me. Between two hiccups he sandwiched a threatening, “Well?” Plainly,
he was well “pickled” and accordingly dangerous. And, on the other hand,
there was a hope for me in his condition. I concluded I might as well be
shot as scared to death. I couldn’t draw a deep breath as long as those
guns were on him.
“Well, what say?” he repeated.
“It’s all right!” I mumbled. “But let’s make it private. Listen! I’ll
whisper!” I leaned forward, sliding both hands along his legs, getting
close to his ear. I laid hands on both weapons and jerked myself back,
holding them low at my hips.
“Make one move and I’ll bore you,” I growled. “Go back to your seat. Go
quick!”
He went. I tucked the guns into my own pockets.
We passed the station to which I had paid fares, and I handed more money
to the conductor. I decided to stay on the train, hoping that my client
would arrive at his home town, whatever it was, and get off. But he kept
right on.
After a time he held up a handkerchief by one corner and waggled
it, giving me a drunken and moist wink. Evidently he wanted further
conference under a flag of truce, and I nodded agreement after I had
made sure that the guns could be come at easily. I agreed because
I hoped I could make some sensible arrangement to get rid of this
particular bottle imp who had landed himself on to my affairs.
“You think you’re a slick one, eh?” My hopes fell, for his tone did
not suggest compromise. “You’d better turn around and go back. You’re
heading into the wrong country. Will you go back?”
“What is the country?”
“Thought you said you used to live out this way!”
“I say, what is the country you’re speaking of?”
“The Potlatch section,” he growled. “You’d better not get as far as
that. You know Shan Benson, don’t you?”
“Maybe!”
“You know Ive Hacker, Binn Mingo, Cole Wass--all friends of mine!”
“What about it?”
“Pals, I say! All work together. Pull off our plays together.”
“Go ahead!”
“Go ahead!” he repeated, grinding his teeth. “We’ll go ahead and make
a pot roast of you in that plug-hat! Do you think I’m a lone-hander,
without friends? Haven’t you ever heard of Steer Bingham?”
My heart jumped. That was the of the names Jeff Dawlin had written down
for me.
“And I suppose you’re holding out Ike Dawlin for a--” I started, giving
him a sharp look.
He smacked his hand on his knee. “Yes, Ike Dawlin. That’s the kind of
friends I’ve got who will--”
“A fine bunch to be afraid of if they all are as handy by as Ike
Dawlin!”
He stared at me.
“Ike Dawlin is East on a gold-brick game, and you know it,” I said.
“East--East--you plug-hat stiff! I’ll show you whether he’s East or
not!”
“He is East along with ‘Peacock’ Pratt.”
My cocksureness made him furious.
“By the jumped-up jeesicks, don’t you suppose I know when Ike Dawlin
lands back in the Potlatch country?”
“I’ll have to see him to believe it. Yes, or ‘Peacock’ Pratt!”
“You follow along on my heels and you’ll see both of ’em all right!
Next you’ll claim to be a friend of theirs, eh?”
“Oh no! If I really thought Ike Dawlin was in the Potlatch instead of
back East I wouldn’t be headed this way. _There’s_ one special man I
wouldn’t want to meet up with.”
Mr. Dragg bounced up and down on the seat in his rage. I had prodded
him as hard as I could in order to make sure that he knew what he was
talking about.
“Damn you!” he snorted. “Then you’ll get your dose of Ike Dawlin. I
won’t eat nor sleep till I find him. And he’ll burn up the road getting
to you. Ike Dawlin, eh? You don’t dare to come on!”
“Keep your eye on me. But if you can dig up Ike Dawlin in these parts
come around and I’ll hand you a present--maybe I’ll hand back your
guns!”
Mr. Dragg by that time was not a pleasant companion and I got up and
went back through the train. He started after me, and then thought
better of it. Probably he reflected that he had me either way. If I got
frightened and went back he would be well rid of me as a rival in his
scheme; if I came on he had Dawlin and the rest--and I surely believed
his word about Dawlin’s whereabouts. I did not know whether I was mighty
glad that my chase was being guided in such handsome manner or was so
dreadfully scared by the prospects just ahead of me that I was half
minded to jump off the train; my feelings were very much mixed up.
However, when I met the gloomy stare of Zebulon Kingsley I grinned--I
couldn’t help it. There was a lot of grim humor in the situation.
“Been raking in more dirty money, I suppose,” he snarled, mistaking the
nature of my smile.
“No, I have turned a better trick, sir. I have just met up with the most
obliging chap I have found in a long time. He knows the man who fooled
you into buying that gold brick. He is going to find him for us!”
“Bah!” sneered the judge. “This is only a wild, crazy, helter-skelter
chase for--”
“I’m telling you the truth, sir! I never saw a man so enthusiastic about
a kindness for strangers! He just told me that he wouldn’t eat or sleep
till he had found that fellow. Why, he is so headlong about the thing
that I’m afraid he’ll find the chap before we’re ready to meet him in
proper style!”
“Hump!” sneered the judge, not taking a mite of stock in me.
I walked away and sat down by myself. There was sad truth in what I just
told Kingsley. I was not ready to meet Ike Dawlin and “Peacock” Pratt.