“I will advertise thee what this people shall do.”
--_Balaam._
“Jeff tells us that too,” said George. “In both letters he speaks of
the El Paso papers. In the letter to ‘the kids’ he says that he read
every line of one of them. Knowing what we do, it is easy to see that
they are brought in to him and that he expects us to communicate with
him by means of personals worded for his eye alone. He is looking for
them now. As he is so certain of seeing personals, it seems sure that
the papers are brought in regularly to him. You know he said his Chief
had all the El Paso papers sent on. And since they allow him this
indulgence, it is probable and consistent that they do not otherwise
ill-treat him. I suppose they are trying to extort a promise of
silence from him under threat of death. But what I don’t see is why
they didn’t kill him right away.”
“I understand that well enough,” said Pringle. “Jeff has talked ’em out
of it! And did he give any hint about what to do?”
“That is the thing I put off till the last,” George responded. “It
is the most ambiguous of all the allusions. When he twice spoke of
Cassius as ‘Yond Cassius,’ when he mentioned Cæsar’s superstitions, and
afterward said some of his hunches were pretty good at that, he might
have been referring me to either ‘Yond Cassius has a lean and hungry
look’ or to the line immediately above: ‘Let me have men about me that
are fat.’ I am reasonably sure that he meant the last. Because he knew
that we would get this far--to the big question of what we were going
to do about it. We are clear as to Thorpe’s guilt; but that isn’t
going to help Jeff--or Tillotson.
“Under the circumstances it would have been imprudent for him to give
his street and number; they might not have liked it----”
“By Jove!” said Leo, “don’t you see? He tells us, in so many words:
‘That’s all I know.’ He didn’t know just where he was. It wasn’t likely
that he would know.”
“So he does! I hadn’t seen through that at all,” said George. “Thank
you. That makes it almost a certainty that he meant ‘the men about
him,’ his jailers, were fat. We have to find his jail, and our best
chance is to find his jailers. To tell us to look for ‘lean and hungry’
men in this country of hard-riding, thin, slim, slender, lean, lank,
scrawny men, would serve no purpose. But fat men are scarce enough to
be noticeable. Besides, Patterson is a mere mountain of flesh; Thorpe
himself is not actually fat, but is dangerously near it. He laid so
much stress on this, coming back to it four times, that he must have
meant it for a big, plain signpost for our guidance. That settles it.
He has men about him that are fat. And we’d better look for them. Mr.
Pringle, will you take the lines?”
“The head of the table is wherever Wes’ sits down, anyway,” remarked
Beebe loyally.
“It is moved and seconded that Mr. John Wesley Pringle be
elected--er--Sole Electee of the Most Ancient Society of Good Men
and True,” said Leo. “All in favor will rise or remain seated.
Contrary-minded are not members and will kindly leave the room. It is
unanimously carried and so ordered. Gentlemen, Mr. Pringle!”
“The Society will come to order,” said the Sole Electee severely.
“Some good man and true will please state the object of the permanent
session and, also, how and why and what he proposes to do first.”
“Hadn’t we better get some detectives to work,” ventured Billy, “and
join forces with Tillotson’s lawyers?”
“No detectives,” said Pringle hastily and decidedly. And “No lawyers,”
echoed George with equal decision, adding: “Please excuse Mr. Pringle
and myself from giving the reasons for our respective vetoes. But they
are good ones.”
“Then we are to depend on our own resources alone?” demanded Leo.
“Exactly. That’s the way the farmer in the second reader got in his
wheat. Let us by all means have Fools for Clients and Every Man His Own
Detective; that’s what makes the guilty quail,” said Pringle darkly.
“If we four can’t do the trick for love, no man can do it for hire.
And there will be no defalcation or failure for fear, favor or funds
or through any fatal half-heartedness. We four friends for our friend
unconditionally, without regard for law or the profits, man or devil,
death, debt, disgrace or damnation! To the last ditch--and then some!”
Pringle reflected a little. “Gentlemen,” he said, “we will put
our little ad. in the papers to-night, at once, _muy pronto_ and
_immediatamente_. After which I should think a good sleep would
be the one first wise move. We will then sally forth, or Sarah
forth, in pursuit of knowledge in general, both in El Paso and in
Juarez--vulgarly called Whereas--and, more especially, knowledge of
Messrs. Thorpe and Patterson and all fat men with whom they do consort.
To avoid giving any slightest ground for suspicion--which must be
avoided at all hazards--I will disguise myself as a bald-headed,
elderly cattleman from Rainbow. Mr. Aughinbaugh----”
“Mister? George, you mean,” said that person.
“George, then. George, you will masquerade as a lawyer’s clerk. Billy,
you’d better buy a haircut and canvas leggings and get yourself up as a
reformed Easterner in the act of backsliding. And you, Leo”--he paused
and regarded Ballinger doubtfully--“You,” he said, and stopped again,
with a puzzled frown. The unhappy victim writhed and twisted, thus held
up to public scorn and derision as neither fish, flesh, nor herring.
“I have it,” said the poor nondescript, with a brave attempt at a
smile. “I’ll buy some clothes, some booze and a stack of blues--and
pass myself off for a Remittance Man.”
Pringle heaved a sigh of relief. “I hated to name it to you,” he said.
“Say, when Jeff first rescued you, exhumed you, resuscitated you, or
whatever it was, he told me a little quotation the first time you went
out and left us. His explanation went some like this:
“‘_I traced my son through a street of broken windows, and found him
dead of old age at five-and-twenty._’
“So, my boy, it’s back to the husks and the hogs for yours. You are
assigned to cover the Street of Broken Windows. And that’s a pretty big
order--in El Paso.”
The next morning Jeff found what he had been looking for these many
days. In both the _Times_ and the _Herald_ was an inconspicuous
personal in the modest retirement of the advertising section, of
obscure wording and small type:
_Now is the time for all good men and true to get a cautious move on
the trail sit tight coming up._
It was the twenty-fourth day of his imprisonment.