“Did you expect to capture them with a walking-stick?” Tish demanded.
She might treat his ankle as she would treat Charlie Sands’ ankle,
but—Tish has not Aggie’s confidence in people, or mine.
“Perfectly well taken,” he said good-humoredly. “I left home with an
entire arsenal in my knapsack, but, as I say, I lost everything when I
fell into the flooded creek. Everything, that is, but my——”
“Good name?” Aggie suggested timidly.
“Determination. That I still have. Ladies, I’m not going back
empty-handed.”
“Then you are in the Government service?” Tish asked with more respect.
“Have you ever heard of George Muldoon, generally known as Felt-hat
Muldoon?”
Had we? Weren’t the papers full of him week after week? Wasn’t it
Muldoon who had brought back the communion service to my church, with
nothing missing and only a dent in one of the silver pitchers? Hadn’t he
just sent up Tish’s own Italian fruit dealer for writing blackhand
letters? Wasn’t he the best sheriff the county had ever had?
“Muldoon!” gasped Tish. “You Muldoon!”
“Not tonight or for the next two or three days. After that—— Tonight,
ladies, and for a day or two, why not adopt me to be your nephew—what
was his name—Sands?—accompanying you on a walking tour?”
Adopt him! The great Muldoon! We’d have married him if he had said the
word, name and all. We sat back and stared at him, open-mouthed. To
think that he had come to us for help, and that in aiding him we were
furthering the cause of justice!
He talked for quite a long time in the darkness, telling us of his
adventures. He remembered perfectly about getting back the silver for
the church, and about Tish’s Italian, and then at last, finding us good
listeners, he told about the girl.
“Is it—er—money?” Aggie breathlessly asked.
“Well—partly,” he admitted. “I don’t make much, of course.”
“But with the rewards and all that?” asked Aggie, who’d been sitting
forward with her mouth open.
“Rewards? Oh, well, of course I get something that way. But it isn’t
steady money. A chap can’t very well go to a girl’s father and tell him
that, if somebody murders somebody else and escapes and he captures him,
he can pay the rent and the grocery bill.”
“Is she pretty?” asked Aggie.
“Beautiful!” His tone was ardent enough to please even Aggie.
He sat without speaking for a time, and none of us liked to interrupt
him. Outside it had stopped raining, and the moon was coming up over the
Camel’s Back. We could hear Modestine stirring in the thicket and a
watery ray of moonlight came into the cave and threw our shadows against
the wall.
“If only,” said Sheriff Muldoon thoughtfully—“If only I could get my
hands on that chap with the red beard!”
We all went to bed soon after. Aggie, as usual, went to sleep at once,
and soon, from behind the kimono screen across the cave, loud noises
told us that Mr. Muldoon also slept. It was then that Tish crept over
and put her mouth to my ear.
“That may be Muldoon all right,” she whispered. “But if it is he’s got a
wife and two children. Mrs. Muldoon is related to Hannah.”