But as to Royal City! The place tickled me about as much as if it were a
cemetery and I were riding in the hearse. It wasn’t even as ripe as that
railroad.
My first performance was to step into a mud-hole about half-way to my
knees, and I wondered how my pearl-gray trousers stood up under that
introduction to the town.
I couldn’t see Mr. Dragg or anybody else; there in that bowl among
the hills the darkness was something a man could eat! We stumbled over
upheavals of muddy earth, stepped into more holes, and made our way
across the especially treacherous places along single planks which were
half submerged in mire. A few lanterns, tied to short posts, were dim
beacons to direct new arrivals from the railroad to the heart of the
“city.” Quite a glare of lights marked the center of business activity.
The slope of the hillside was dotted with bits of radiance from
uncurtained windows. In that darkness only those points of light hinted
at the extent of this new town. The dots were widely scattered, showing
that Royal City was ambitiously endeavoring to cover as much ground as
possible.
After threading the course marked by the lanterns we came to a stretch
of pulpy mud which was bordered by a sidewalk of four planks abreast,
evidently the main street of the place. There were buildings of
considerable size on both sides of the thoroughfare, but these buildings
certainly did put Royal City into the mushroom class. There was not
a bit of stone or brick nor a clapboard or shingle in evidence. The
buildings were constructed of beams, boards, laths, and tarred paper.
They gave me the feeling that I could pop them between my hands like I’d
pop a blown-up paper bag.
A lantern, hung on the corner of a building containing a store,
lighted up a sign, “Empire Avenue.” The sign over the door of the store
advertised the place as the “Imperial Emporium.” A fairly huge structure
with tarred-paper outer walls was indicated by its sign as being the
“Imperial Hotel.”
There was nothing bashful about the names picked in Royal City!
The windows of the “Imperial Hotel” shed plenty of light upon the
sidewalk in front of it, and I caught sight of Dragg hurrying past as if
he wished to be swallowed up in the shadow’s on the other side. The man
had reached the street ahead of us, for he had been in the smoking-car
at the front of the train.
I took a chance and led Kingsley into the “Imperial Hotel” and
registered in a book that a man in shirtsleeves tossed at me. I wrote
“Adam Mann” and “A. Fellow”--the “A” standing for “Another,” of course,
and that wasn’t bad for a quick grab at names. I did not care to
advertise the name of Zebulon Kingsley to certain gentlemen in those
parts.
From the corner of my eye I saw Dragg peering in at the window when the
man in shirt-sleeves led us upstairs to a room which held two narrow
cots and an unpainted washstand with bowl and pitcher. The walls were of
tarred paper.
“Is this all you can give us for a room?” asked the judge, as sour as
vinegar.
“What do you expect in a new town--marble floors and gold door-knobs?
I have taken care of better men than you and they haven’t kicked.”
He turned on me; I had not said anything. “You seem to have a rush of
plug-hat to the brain!”
His impudence gave me my chance. Dragg had located me at that hotel and
I wondered if I couldn’t turn a little trick.
“We’ll move on and look for a landlord with better manners,” I said.
“Go ahead,” advised the man. “A lot of tenderfeet do the same thing and
after they’ve taken a look at the other place they come back here and
beg for a room.”
On the street I kept in the shadows. After a time we came to another
hulk of paper and boards. Its sign read, “Pallace Hotel.”
That extravagance in L’s might hint at generosity, I pondered, but I had
my doubts.
The “Palace” had a bar-room in the front of the house and there were
many customers crowded at it.
“We’d better go back to the other hotel, bad as it is,” suggested the
judge. “There are drunken men in there and it is a wicked place.”
I put up my hand and pushed Kingsley back from the window into the
gloom.
“When one has business with wicked men those men must be followed to
a wicked place, sir. I found fault with the other hotel on purpose. I
didn’t intend to stay there after I knew that a certain man thought
he had located me for the night. It’s a wise plan to keep wicked men
guessing. Stay back here a moment!”
I stepped along and stared in at the window, hiding my face with my
forearm.
I saw Dragg at the bar, and Dragg had a man by the arm and was
whispering in his ear. Dragg’s face expressed huge pleasure. He slapped
the man on the back and bought drinks. After they had tossed off the
liquor, Dragg resumed his business at the man’s ear.
This man stood out in that slouchy group at the bar as a peacock would
stand out among pullets in a hen-yard. He was distinctly a loud noise in
the matter of wardrobe. He would have made a lurid smear even among
the high dressers who top the crests of the Broadway crowds between
Forty-second Street and Greeley’s statue. He was of that sort of men who
are paunchy and seem to be glad of it, because the extra beam affords
them opportunity to display variegated waistcoats to better advantage. I
realized that I was looking on “Peacock” Pratt.
After a few moments I tiptoed back to Kingsley, and, without speaking,
propelled him to a spot where he could get a view of the men at the bar.
“Do you recognize anybody there, sir?”
“There he is--the man who brought the brick--one of the infernal
robbers!” stuttered Kingsley. He was fairly beside himself with sudden
excitement. His eyes had fallen first on the most conspicuous figure in
the room. “He has my money. I want it. I’ll--”
But I pushed him back when he started to rush into the hotel. “I guess
that man wouldn’t hand you his roll if you ran in there and snapped your
fingers under his nose, Judge Kingsley. You recognize him, eh? That’s
enough for now. I’ll tell you that your friend, there, is known in this
section as ‘Peacock’ Pratt, and he’s a good man for us to stay away from
for the present.”
“How do you know so much about these men--how do you know where to come
to find them--dragging me across the continent?” demanded the old man.
His fury at sight of that smug blackleg had to blow off and I was the
nearest object.
“I’ll have to confess that I didn’t know for sure I was to see this
man here to-night. I had my line out and a good bait on, but I didn’t
believe I’d get a bite so soon. You must keep cool, Judge Kingsley--keep
cool and out of sight. Simply seeing that man isn’t getting your money.
We’ve got considerable of a job ahead of us.”
The judge was all of a tremble while we stood there at the edge of the
shadow and watched the room and the drinkers. At last, with a flourish
of his hand, Pratt gave orders to the bartender to fill all glasses. We
heard his hoarse voice above all others. He tossed a bill on the bar and
he and Dragg left in company and climbed the stairs leading up from the
hotel office.
“Judge Kingsley,” I said, “I left the other place and came over here
hoping I could sneak close enough to a certain chap to overhear what he
proposes to do about a little matter that I suggested to him a few hours
ago. I see that he has found somebody to talk to. We’ve got a handy sort
of house for eavesdropping, but I want you to remember that the other
fellow can hear us, too. Come along with me and keep your head. A lot
depends!” The “Pallace” was evidently more of a free and easy tavern
than the “Imperial.” There was no register on the planks which served
for an office desk. The proprietor looked up at us and leisurely lighted
his pipe before answering my questions regarding accommodations.
“Four dollars apiece--two in a room. Pay now. Includes breakfast, and
there’s a cold, stand-up supper out in the dining-room.”
“We bought box lunches from the brakeman on the train; we don’t want
supper,” I explained.
“Price just the same. Supper is there, and I ain’t to blame if you don’t
want to eat it,” stated the proprietor. “You needn’t look for any
place to write your names,” he added, noting that my eyes seemed to
be searching for something that should be on the desk. “We don’t keep
books. And half the men who come along here can’t write, anyway.”
I laid the money in his grimy hand and he fished two cards from his vest
pocket and scrawled “Brakfust” on each with a lead-pencil.
“Give ’em up to the table-girl in the morning. Now, gents, all the
rooms up-stairs are just alike and there ain’t no locks on the doors.
Go up and help yourselves to any room that ain’t being used. I hope you
don’t snore, either of you. It’s apt to start gun-play from them that’s
trying to get to sleep in other rooms, and the walls we’ve got up-stairs
don’t stop bullets. Sleep hearty!”
The judge followed me, muttering his opinions in regard to the hotel
methods in Royal City.
“Hush!” I warned. “Tread lightly and keep still. It’s a stroke of luck
that he lets us pick our own rooms.”
Smoky, stinking kerosene-lamps lighted dimly the corridor up-stairs.
Unplaned planks formed the floor, and here again were the walls of
tarred paper that had enabled Royal City to grow overnight. Some of the
doors that gave upon the corridor were open, and the rooms were dark
and apparently untenanted. Light shone from chinks in the walls here and
there, in other places, showing that guests were in their rooms.
I tiptoed cautiously along the planks with ear out at each point where
light sifted from crannies. Then I grasped the judge by the arm and
thrust him into a room. I lighted the tiny lamp and motioned the old man
to take a seat in the single chair. I sat on the edge of the bed.
When a drunken man is on a topic that sops up all his interest, he not
only iterates, he reiterates. It is hard to pry a wabbly tongue loose
from the favorite topic. Intoxication seems to make the subject fresher
and more entrancing with each repetition. The fuddled mind gets into
a run-around, as men lost in snow or fog keep on traveling and always
return to the same place. I had no means of determining how many
times Dragg had been over the subject with Mr. Pratt, but that latter
gentleman kept snarling out protests that the narrator did not heed. It
was a story about how a stranger in a plug-hat--a shark of a lawyer--had
hypnotized him, Dragg, on the train and had sucked out of him all his
plans, projects, and secrets in regard to the new city of Breed and now
proposed to rob said Dragg of all profits and rake-offs, and if a man
could do that and get away with it what would be the use in any honest
man starting out in the world and turning a trick for himself, as Dragg
had proposed to do? So on and on, he gabbled.
“Say, look here, ‘Dangerflag’”--and this seemed a good nickname
for Dragg’s red face--“don’t con me any more as the human charlotte
russe--the top part of me is hard! There ain’t any such thing as
hypnotizing a man when he doesn’t want to be hypnotized. You were drunk
and you slit open your little bundle of playthings for him to look at.”
“If I wasn’t hypnotized how did he get two guns off me--and I sitting
there not able to move hand or foot or wink my eyes?”
“I’d be more inclined to think you begged him to take ’em as a
guarantee of friendship, and offered to kiss him in the bargain,”
sneered Mr. Pratt. “I’ve seen you drunk, Dragg.”
“But I wasn’t to the give-my-shirt drunk stage that time,” insisted
the other. “I was hiring him for a lawyer--driving a sharp trade with
him--and then he hypnotized me and cleaned me out. And he’s over there
in the other hotel--and I’m going to get to him before he puts me out of
business. I’ll tell you again--”
“For the love of Jehoshaphat _don’t_ tell me again!” protested Pratt. “I
have got it by heart.”
“But you haven’t told me where Ike Dawlin is. He is the only man that
shark is afraid of. He told me so. He reckons that Ike is in the East.
That makes him bold to do me dirt. I made believe that I know where Ike
is. I tried to scare him, but the bluff didn’t go. He is sure that Ike
ain’t West. You’re Ike’s regular partner, and you know where he is. I
need him. Send for him, and we’ll hold that plug-hatted skyootus here
till Ike can whirl in and back him off. Blast him! I could have dropped
him if this was ten years ago, even if he was from the East, and wore
a plug-hat--and I could have got away with it--but the law sharks
have been and tied us all up.”
“You want to think twice before you try gun-play on a man from the East
who comes wearing a plug-hat,” advised Pratt. “It’s a pretty good sign
that he is from the upper shelves back home, and somebody will be
slammed hard if he gets hurt. Keep your hands off a plug-hatter,
‘Dangerflag.’ I don’t believe Ike would dip in, even if he were here.
He’s too comfortable just now to play scarecrow for your private
interests. He might, if I asked him to, of course. But I don’t see any
reason for asking him.”
“I’ll give you a half share in the Breed job,” promised Dragg. “I’ve
told you I would if you can gaff that law shark.”
“The Breed job looks like digging into a national bank vault with
your thumb-nail,” remarked Mr. Pratt, listlessly. “A lot of law and
complications! This re-locating business runs against snags always. I
don’t mind telling you that Ike and I find the old game a lot easier
when we want to clean up an easy make. I’ll be blamed if we could sell
mining stock the last time we went East. What do you know about that?
And then we nudged each other and turned around and speared three easy
propositions on the good old gold-brick game. You wouldn’t believe
they’d still fall--but they do it. It’s simply a case of go hunt in the
odd corners for the right man. They’re there, waiting. We peeled five
thousand off the back of an old town treasurer--as soft money as we ever
pulled. A town treasurer, mind you! We didn’t have to go farther into
the bush than that! You can’t expect us to be very enthusiastic about a
claim-jumping proposition just now--with plenty in our Dockets. Gimme a
match! When you go to fighting a boom city and a railroad crowd, you’ve
got your work cut out for you--and just now I’m feeling a lot like
loafing.”
Mr. Pratt was very wordy--but he was almighty interesting. Who was
hugging the most money--he or Dawlin?
It was plain to me that the town treasurer of Levant was holding in with
difficulty. He twisted on his chair and his face was gray with anger and
his lips moved. I scowled a warning.
“Well, you can loaf on _my_ job all right if you’ll grab in,” snapped
Dragg, temper in his voice. “I’m not asking you to break your neck. You
have got the thing sized up all wrong. I don’t expect to own Breed. I’m
going to operate on bluff. The Breed boomers and the railroad will come
across rather than have the city set back by a hold-up of everything
while land titles are being settled. If they’ll hand me cash, I’ll keep
still, surrender my claim, and the new lines can be ran and locations
filed before anybody wakes up. They’ll see the point all right.”
“And I reckon that the lawyer you hired on the train sees it all right,
too,” commented Pratt.
“I don’t know what made me blow myself to him after I had dodged lawyers
so long,” mourned Dragg. “But the way he was dressed made him look so
mighty solid and reliable and honest--and his eyes were nice and brown!
He got me! I tell you I was hypnotized. It wasn’t just because I had
budge in me. But he’ll never get to Breed ahead of _me_. That’ll be his
game, of course.”
“Better make your getaway to-night and beat him to it,” suggested Pratt.
Dragg was profane in his rejection of this counsel. He stated that Pratt
ought to have more sense than to think a project of that order could be
settled by a sprinting-match.
“You know what Callas prairie is in March as well as I do,” he
sputtered. “It would be a gamble which one of us would get across first
if it comes to a race through that ‘’dobe’ mud. It’s all luck whether
a stage-coach or a wagon or a cayuse gets through. I’d have gone around
and come into Breed from the south, but I thought I’d rather tackle
sixteen miles of Callas mud in March than ride six hundred miles in
jerk-water trains. See here, Pratt, I’ve got to have time to operate
this thing without that shark hanging to me. He’s afraid of Ike. I don’t
know what made him tell me so--but he was so mighty sure that Ike was
East that he wanted to shoot his mouth off a little so as to aggravate
me, I reckon. He has got to be held here in Royal City till I can pull
off my job in Breed. I’m not going to have him racing me around over the
country, with a chance of his queering the whole proposition. Now come
into this thing and help me out, will you?”
Mr. Pratt yawned audibly and allowed that he would not.
“Then get word to Ike Dawlin for me,” pleaded Dragg.
“I don’t think he wants to be bothered,” drawled Pratt, indifferently.
“I won’t send for him. That’s final!”
I think it would have been hard telling at that moment who was more
disappointed, Mr. Dragg or myself!
I had reckoned specially on Mr. Dawlin. He was boss of the gang,
according to his brother’s telling. In all Likelihood he was better
thatched with greenbacks than anybody else in the band.
“Furthermore,” stated Mr. Pratt, “I can’t be bothered with your
business. I have some of my own to attend to. I’m going to jump the
train to-morrow and get back to some place where it’s safe to wear real
clothes instead of a diving-suit or overalls.”
And so I was going to lose Mr. Pratt!
To be sure, I had not exactly made up my mind what to do with him if he
remained in Royal City; but if he were to start on some kind of a hike
and we were obliged to chase him we would betray ourselves and our case,
sure as fate. Mr. Pratt was certainly no fool, and would know how to
cover a trail the moment he suspected that somebody was chasing him. But
I could see no reasonable way of keeping an independent gentleman of his
nature in that dump of a Royal City.
“I tell you, you are turning down a good lay when you duck out on this
Breed--”
“Oh, hell!” snapped Pratt with all kinds of coarse scorn in his tone.
“About all this re-locating business amounts to is that you’ll either
be bored in the back or boarded in jail! I’ve been studying the game,
Dragg.” He grew confidential. “That’s why I ran down here to this
hog-wallow. Ike and I came. These lines here are run by guess and by
gad! There’s no clear title back of the land. We figured we would jump
in.”
“You’d have the law behind you,” insisted Dragg. “Sure! And all the
citizens who own guns, too! The trouble is, Dragg, they all know they’re
skating on thin ice. They are looking for something to drop. And so as
to be ready for trouble when it comes they have gone to work and got
just as mad as they can stick so that they can put a claim-jumper where
he belongs in a hurry. None of it for me, Dragg.”
The other muttered.
“I tell you, Dragg,” insisted Mr. Pratt, “I’d hate to be the man to put
my name on to a re-location stake in this place! Law to back you--yes!
But I have been testing out their temper! It’s dangerous.”
“But mobs don’t do up men any longer in this part of the country.”
“Perhaps I stated it a little strong, Dragg. But a fellow who tries to
put anything over on this town, with the people here in their present
temper, will get slammed into the pen--and there’s no knowing when
they’ll let him out!”
And if that wasn’t a straight tip from Mr. Pratt to a poor young chap in
desperate need of good counsel and help in a ticklish matter, then I’m
no guesser.
“So it’s back up the line for me--where I can buy a cocktail and get the
smell of this tarred paper out of my clothes!”
But Mr. Pratt’s tip was such a helpful one that, providing Judge
Kingsley had had a drop of sporting blood in him, I would have posted a
little bet that Mr. Pratt would stay on with us for a while. I could
see that the judge had made up his mind already that we had lost our Mr.
Pratt.
“Sit here and don’t make a sound!” I whispered, and I pussy-footed for
the door.
He opened his mouth and I shook my fist at him. I hoped I had on a
demoniac expression--I tried to put one on.
“Go to the devil, you and Dawlin, too!” barked Dragg. “If I’ve got to
handle this thing single-handed, the make will be all the bigger for
me. I’m all done worrying about an Eastern shyster beating me out of
the game on my own stamping-ground. If he tries to take the stage in the
morning to cross Callas prairie, I’ll smash that plug-hat down over his
eyes, yank them guns out from under his coat-tail and blow him into the
middle of next week. I’ll think up a story that will let me out.”
Ah, so Mr. Dragg must be considered along with ‘Mr. Pratt and Mr.
Dawlin!
I left the room and hurried down-stairs, hoping the stores had not
closed. My mind was mighty busy! I found a store that was still open. It
was the “Imperial Emporium” and seemed to be well named, for I was
able to purchase there a pair of shears, some spirit gum, a carpenter’s
lead-pencil, and a huge ball of twine. Then I hustled back to Zebulon
Kingsley, who sat livid and rigid, listening to the bragging of the man
who had robbed him.
I suppose the stuff I tossed on the bed looked mighty queer to him, and
I wasn’t just sure about all of it myself. But I did not dare to ask
any leading questions in Royal City about claim-jumping and I decided to
tumble along alone, doing my little best as an amateur.
Zebulon Kingsley was in a sufficiently volcanic state of mind without
any more stirring up.
It’s a wonder that I ever got away with what I started on next in my
case.
Perhaps his settled idea that I had lost my mind assisted in taming him
enough so that he submitted in his fear that I might become violent.
I look back now and wonder how I ever presumed so greatly even in the
emergency that had arisen. But if “Peacock” Pratt were to remain in
Royal City and if Ike Dawlin would join him, as I anticipated, the man
with me must not be known as Zebulon Kingsley, of Levant, their victim.
So I stood in front of Judge Kingsley and issued an ultimatum.
I’ll never forget the look on his face!