found Colonel Baldwin and another man--a lawyer, I think he was--waiting
for me. They said you were needing a friend who could go and talk to you
and--'calm you down,' was the phrase the lawyer used. I was good-natured
enough to go with them, but when we reached your offices you had gone,
and the ranch girl was there alone, waiting for her father."
"That was nonsense!" he commented; "their going after you as if I were a
maniac or a drunken man, I mean."
This time Miss Richlander's smile was distinctly resentful. "I suppose
the colonel's daughter answered the purpose better," she said. "There
was an awkward little _contretemps_, and Miss Baldwin refused, rather
rudely, I thought, to tell her father where you had gone."
Smith broke away from the unwelcome subject abruptly, saying: "There is
something else you ought to know. Jibbey is here, at last."
"Here in the hotel?"
"Yes."
"Does he know you are here?"
"He does."
"Why didn't you tell me before? That will complicate things dreadfully.
Tucker will talk and tell all he knows; he can't help it."
"This is one time when he will not talk. Perhaps he will tell you why
when you see him."
Miss Richlander glanced at the face of the small watch pinned on her
shoulder.
"You must not stay here any longer," she protested. "The Stantons may
come down any minute, now, and they mustn't find us together. I am
still forgiving enough to want to help you, but you must do your part
and let me know what is going on."
Smith promised and took his dismissal with a mingled sense of relief and
fresh embarrassment. In the new development which was threatening to
drag him back once more into the primitive savageries, he would have
been entirely willing to eliminate Verda Richlander as a factor, helpful
or otherwise. But there was good reason to fear that she might refuse to
be eliminated.
William Starbuck's new car was standing in front of Judge Warner's house
in the southern suburb when Smith descended from the closed cab which he
had taken at the Hophra House side entrance. The clock in the
court-house tower was striking the quarter of nine. The elevated mesa
upon which the suburb was built commanded a broad view of the town and
the outlying ranch lands, and in the distance beyond the river the
Hillcrest cottonwoods outlined themselves against a background of
miniature buttes.
Smith's gaze took in the wide, sunlit prospect. He had paid and
dismissed his cabman, and the thought came to him that in a few hours
the wooded buttes, the bare plains, the mighty mountains, and the
pictured city spreading map-like at his feet would probably exist for
him only as a memory. While he halted on the terrace, Starbuck came out
of the house.
"The judge is at breakfast," the mine owner announced. "You're to go in
and wait. What do you want me to do next?"
Smith glanced down regretfully at the shining varnish and resplendent
metal of the new automobile. "If your car wasn't so new," he began; but
Starbuck cut him off.
"Call the car a thousand years old and go on."
"All right. When I get through with the judge I shall want to go out to
the dam. Will you wait and take me?"
"Surest thing on earth,"--with prompt acquiescence. And then: "Is it as
bad as you thought it was going to be, John?"
"It's about as bad as it can be," was the sober reply, and with that
Smith went in to wait for his interview with the Timanyoni's
best-beloved jurist.
As we have seen, this was at nine o'clock, or a few minutes before the
hour, and as Starbuck descended the stone steps to take his seat in the
car, David Kinzie, at his desk in the Brewster City National, was asking
the telephone "central" to give him the Timanyoni High Line offices.
Martin, the bookkeeper, answered, and he took a message from the bank
president that presently brought Colonel Dexter Baldwin to the private
room in the bank known to nervous debtors as "the sweat-box".
"Sit down, Dexter," said the banker shortly; "sit down a minute while I
look at my mail."
It was one of David Kinzie's small subtleties to make a man sit idly
thus, on one pretext or another; it rarely failed to put the incomer at
a disadvantage, and on the present occasion it worked like a charm.
Baldwin had let his cigar go out and had chewed the end of it into a
pulp before Kinzie swung around in his chair and launched out abruptly.
"You and I have always been pretty good friends, Dexter," he began, "and
I have called you down here this morning to prove to you that I am still
your friend. Where is your man Smith?"
Baldwin shook his head. "I don't know," he answered. "I haven't seen him
since last evening."
"Are you sure he is still in town?"
"I haven't any reason to think that he isn't."
"Hasn't run away, then?"
The Missouri colonel squared himself doggedly in the suppliant debtor's
chair, which was the one Kinzie had placed for him. "What are you
driving at, Dave?" he demanded.
"We'll tackle your end of it, first," said the banker curtly. "Do you
know that you and your crowd have come to the bottom of the bag on that
dam proposition?"
"No, I don't."
"Well, you have. You've got just this one more day to live."
The Missourian fell back upon his native phrase.
"I reckon you'll have to show me, Dave."
"I will. Have you seen the weather report this morning?"
"No."
"I thought not. I've had a trained observer up in the eastern hills for
the past week. The river rose four feet last night, and there are
predictions out for more cloudbursts and thunderstorms in the headwater
region. The snow is melting fast in the higher gulches, and you know as
well as I do that there is at least a strong probability that your dam
won't hold the flood rise."
"I don't know it," asserted Baldwin stoutly. "But go on. You've got your
gun loaded: what are you aiming it at?"
"Just this: there is a chance that you'll lose the dam by natural causes
before the concrete hardens; but if you don't, you're sure to lose it
the other way. I told you weeks ago that the other people were carrying
too many big guns for you. I don't want to see you killed off, Dexter."
"I'm no quitter; you ought to know that, Dave," was the blunt rejoinder.
"I know; but there are times when it is simply foolhardy to hold on. The
compromise proposition that I put up to you people a while back still
holds good. But to-day is the last day, Dexter. You must accept it now,
if you are going to accept it at all."
"And if we still refuse?"
"You'll go smash, the whole kit of you. As I've said, this is the last
call."
By this time Baldwin's cigar was a hopeless wreck.
"You've got something up your sleeve, Dave: what is it?" he inquired.
The banker pursed his lips and the bristling mustache assumed its most
aggressive angle.
"There are a number of things, but the one which concerns you most, just
now, is this: we've got Smith's record, at last. He is an outlaw, with
a price on his head. We've dug out the whole story. He is a defaulting
bank cashier, and before he ran away he tried to kill his president."
Baldwin was frowning heavily. "Who told you all this? Was it this Miss
Richlander over at the Hophra House?"
"No; it was her father. I sent one of my young men out to the Topaz to
look him up."
"And you have telegraphed to the chief of police, or the sheriff, or
whoever it is that wants Smith?"
"Not yet. I wanted to give you one more chance, Dexter. Business comes
first. The Brewster City National is a bank, not a detective agency. You
go and find Smith and fire him; tell him he is down and out; get rid of
him, once for all. Then come back here and we'll fix up that compromise
with Stanton."
Baldwin found a match and tried to relight the dead cigar. But it was
chewed past redemption.
"Let's get it plumb straight, Dave," he pleaded, in the quiet tone of
one who will leave no peace-keeping stone unturned. "You say you've got
John dead to rights. Smith is a mighty common name. I shouldn't wonder
if there were half a million 'r so John Smiths--taking the country
over. How do you know you've got the right one?"
"His middle name is 'Montague'," snapped the banker, "and the man who is
wanted called himself 'J. Montague Smith'. But we can identify him
positively. There is one person in Brewster who knew Smith before he
came here; namely, Mr. Richlander's daughter. She can tell us if he is
the right Smith, and she probably will if the police ask her to."
Baldwin may have had his own opinion about that, but if so, he kept it
to himself and spoke feelingly of other things.
"Dave," he said, rising to stand over the square-built man in the
swing-chair, "we've bumped the bumps over a good many miles of rough
road together since we first hit the Timanyoni years ago, and it's like
pulling a sound tooth to have to tell you the plain truth. You've got a
mighty bad case of money-rot. The profit account has grown so big with
you that you can't see out over the top of it. You've horsed back and
forth between Stanton's outfit and ours until you can't tell the
difference between your old friends and a bunch of low-down,
conscienceless land-pirates. You pull your gun and go to shooting
whenever you get ready. We'll stay with you and try to hold up our
end--and John's. And you mark my words, Dave; you're the man that's
going to get left in this deal; the straddler always gets left." And
with that he cut the interview short and went back to the High Line
offices on the upper floor.
XXVII
Two Witnesses
Driven by Starbuck in the brand-new car, Smith reached the dam at
half-past ten and was in time to see the swarming carpenters begin the
placing of the forms for the pouring of the final section of the great
wall. Though the high water was lapping at the foot timbers of the
forming, and the weather reports were still portentous, Williams was in
fine fettle. There had been no further interferences on the part of the
railroad people, every man on the job was spurting for the finish, and
the successful end was now fairly in sight.
"We'll be pouring this afternoon," he told Smith, "and with a
twenty-four-hour set for the concrete, and the forms left in place for
additional security, we can shut the spillway gates and back the water
into the main ditch. Instead of being a hindrance then, the flood-tide
will help. Under slack-water conditions it would take a day or two to
finish filling the reservoir lake, but now we'll get the few feet of
rise needed to fill the sluices almost while you wait."
"You have your guards out, as we planned?" Smith inquired.
"Twenty of the best men I could find. They are patrolling on both sides
of the river, with instructions to report if they see so much as a
rabbit jump up."
"Good. I'm going to let Starbuck drive me around the lake limits to see
to it personally that your pickets are on the job. But first, I'd like
to use your 'phone for a minute or two," and with that Smith shut
himself up in the small field-office and called Martin, the bookkeeper,
at the town headquarters.
The result of the brief talk with Martin seemed satisfactory, for when
it was concluded, Smith rang off and asked for the Hophra House. Being
given the hotel exchange, he called the number of Miss Richlander's
suite, and the answer came promptly in the full, throaty voice of the
Olympian beauty.
"Is that you, Montague?"
"Yes. I'm out at the dam. Nothing has been done yet. No telegraphing, I
mean. You understand?"
"Perfectly. But something is going to be done. Mr. K. has had Colonel
B. with him in the bank. I saw the colonel go in while I was at
breakfast. When are you coming back to town?"
"Not for some time; I have a drive to make that will keep me out until
afternoon."
"Very well; you'd better stay away as long as you can, and then you'd
better communicate with me before you show yourself much in public. I'll
have Jibbey looking out for you."
Smith said "good-by" and hung up the receiver with a fresh twinge of
dissatisfaction. Every step made his dependence upon Verda Richlander
more complete. To be sure, he told himself, they had both forsworn
sentiment in the old days, but was that any guaranty that it was not now
awakening in Josiah Richlander's daughter? And Corona Baldwin: what
would she say to this newest alliance? Would she not say again, and this
time with greater truth, that he was a coward of the basest sort; of the
type that makes no scruple of hiding behind a woman's skirts?
Happily, there was work to do, and he went out and did it. With the new
car to cover the longer interspaces, a complete round of Williams's
sentries was made, with detours up and down the line of the abandoned
Red Butte Southwestern, whose right-of-way claims had been so recently
revived. Smith tried to tell himself that he was only making a necessary
reconnaissance thoroughly; that he was not delaying his return to town
because Verda had told him to. But when the real motive could no longer
be denied, he brought himself up with a jerk. If it had come to this,
that he was afraid to face whatever might be awaiting him in Brewster,
it was time to take counsel once more of the elemental things.
"Back to Brewster, Billy, by way of the camp," he directed, and the
overworked car was turned and headed accordingly.
It was some little time before this, between the noon-hour and the
one-o'clock Hophra House luncheon, to be exact, that Mr. David Kinzie,
still halting between two opinions, left his desk and the bank and
crossed the street to the hotel. Inquiry at the lobby counter revealing
the fact that Miss Richlander was in her rooms, Kinzie wrote his name on
a card and let the clerk send it up. The boy came back almost
immediately with word that Miss Richlander was waiting in the mezzanine
parlors.
The banker tipped the call-boy and went up alone. He had seen Miss
Richlander, once when she was driving with Smith and again at the
theatre in the same company. So he knew what to expect when he tramped
heavily into the parlor overlooking the street. None the less, the
dazzling beauty of the young woman who rose to shake hands with him and
call him by name rather took him off his feet. David Kinzie was a
hopeless bachelor, from choice, but there are women, and women.
"Do you know, Mr. Kinzie, I have been expecting you all day," she said
sweetly, making him sit down beside her on one of the flaming red
monstrosities billed in the hotel inventories as "Louis Quinze sofas".
"My father sent me a note by one of your young men, and he said that
perhaps you would--that perhaps you might want to--" Her rich voice was
at its fruitiest, and the hesitation was of exactly the proper shade.
Kinzie, cold-blooded as a fish with despondent debtors, felt himself
suddenly warmed and moved to be gentle with this gracious young woman.
"Er--yes, Miss Richlander--er--a disagreeable duty, you know. I wanted
to ask about this young man, Smith. We don't know him very well here in
Brewster, and as he has considerable business dealings with the bank,
we--that is, I thought your father might be able to tell us something
about his standing in his home town."
"And my father did tell you?"
"Well--yes; he--er--he says Smith is a--a grand rascal; a fugitive from
justice; and we thought--" David Kinzie, well hardened in all the
processes of dealing with men, was making difficult weather of it with
this all-too-beautiful young woman.
Miss Richlander's laugh was well restrained. She seemed to be struggling
earnestly to make it appear so.
"You business gentlemen are so funny!" she commented. "You know, of
course, Mr. Kinzie, that _this_ Mr. Smith and I are old friends; you've
probably seen us together enough to be sure of that. Hasn't it occurred
to you that however well I might know the Mr. Smith my father has
written you about, I should hardly care to be seen in public with him?"
"Then there are two of them?" Kinzie demanded.
The young woman was laughing again. "Would that be so very
wonderful?--with so many Smiths in the world?"
"But--er--the middle name, Miss Richlander: _that_ isn't so infern--so
very common, I'm sure."
"It is rather remarkable, isn't it? But there are a good many Montagues
in our part of the world, too. The man my father wrote you about always
signed himself 'J. Montague', as if he were a little ashamed of the
'John'."
"Then this Brewster Smith isn't the one who is wanted in Lawrenceville
for embezzlement and attempted murder?"
"Excuse me," said the beauty, with another very palpable attempt to
smother her amusement. "If you could only know this other Smith; the one
my father wrote you about, and the one he thinks you were asking about:
they are not the least bit alike. J. Montague, as I remember him, was a
typical society man; a dancing man who was the pet of the younger
girls--and of their mothers, for that matter; you know what I mean--the
kind of man who wears dress clothes even when he dines alone, and who
wouldn't let his beard grow overnight for a king's ransom. But wait a
moment. There is a young gentleman here who came last evening direct
from Lawrenceville. Let me send for him."
She rose and pressed the bell-push, and when the floor boy came, he was
sent to the lobby to page Jibbey. During the little wait, David Kinzie
was skilfully made to talk about other things. Jibbey was easily found,
as it appeared, and he came at once. Miss Richlander did the honors
graciously.
"Mr. Kinzie, this is Mr. Tucker Jibbey, the son of one of our
Lawrenceville bankers. Tucker--Mr. Kinzie; the president of the Brewster
City National." Then, before Kinzie could begin: "Tucker, I've sent for
you in self-defense. You know both Mr. John Smith, at present of
Brewster, and also J. Montague Smith, sometime of Lawrenceville and now
of goodness only knows where. Mr. Kinzie is trying to make out that they
are one and the same."
Jibbey laughed broadly. He stood in no awe of banks, bankers, or stubbly
mustaches.
"I'll tell John, when I see him again--and take a chance on being able
to run faster than he can," he chuckled. "Ripping good joke!"
"Then you know both men?" said Kinzie, glancing at his watch and rising.
"Like a book. They're no more alike than black and white. Our man here
is from Cincinnati; isn't that where you met him, Verda? Yes, I'm sure
it is--that night at the Carsons', if you remember. I believe I was the
one who introduced him. And I recollect you didn't like him at first,
because he wore a beard. They told me, the last time I was over in
Cinci, that he'd gone West somewhere, but they didn't say where. He was
the first man I met when I lit down here. Damn' little world, isn't it,
Mr. Kinzie?"
David Kinzie was backing away, watch in hand. Business was very
pressing, he said, and he must get back to his desk. He was very much
obliged to Miss Richlander, and was only sorry that he had troubled her.
When her father should return to Brewster he would be glad to meet him,
and so on and so on, to and beyond the portieres which finally blotted
him out, for the two who were left in the Louis Quinze parlor.
"Is that about what you wanted me to say?" queried Jibbey, when the
click of the elevator door-latch told them that Mr. Kinzie was
descending.
"Tucker, there are times when you are almost lovable," said the beauty
softly, with a hand on Jibbey's shoulder.
"I'm glad it's what you wanted, because it's what I was going to say,
anyway," returned the ne'er-do-well soberly, thus showing that he, too,
had not yet outlived the influence of the overnight hand-grip.
An hour further along in the afternoon, Starbuck's new car, pausing
momentarily at the construction camp to give its occupants a chance to
witness the rapid fulfilment of Williams's prediction in the swiftly
pouring streams of concrete, advertised its shining presence to the
engineer, who came up for a word with Smith while Starbuck had his head
under the hood of the new-paint-burning motor.
"Somebody's been trying to get you over the wire, John; some woman," he
said, in tones as low as the thunderings of the rock-crushers would
sanction. "She wouldn't give me her number, but she wanted me to tell
you, if you came back here, that it was all right; that you had nothing
to be afraid of. She said you'd understand."
XXVIII
The Straddler
Since Brewster was a full-fledged city, its banks closed at three
o'clock. Ten minutes after the hour, which happened also to be about the
same length of time after Starbuck and Smith had reached town, Mr.
Crawford Stanton got himself admitted by the janitor at the side door of
the Brewster City National. President Kinzie was still at his desk in
his private room, and the promoter entered unannounced.
"I thought I'd hang off and give you the limit--all the time there was,"
he said, dropping into the debtor's chair at the desk-end. And then,
with a quarrelsome rasp in his tone: "Are you getting ready to switch
again?"
Though his victims often cursed the banker for his shrewd caution and
his ruthless profit-takings, no one had ever accused him of timidity in
a stand-up encounter.
"You've taken that tone with me before, Stanton, and I don't like it,"
he returned brusquely. "I've been willing to serve you, as I could, in
a business matter, and I am still willing to serve you; but you may as
well keep it in mind that neither you, nor the people you represent, own
the Brewster City National, or any part of it, in fee simple."
"We can buy you out any minute we think we need you," retorted Stanton.
"But never mind about that. Your man came back from the Topaz last
night; I know, because I make it my business to keep cases on you and
everybody else. You've let the better part of the day go by without
saying a word, and I've drawn the only conclusion there is to draw:
you're getting ready to swap sides again."
Kinzie frowned his impatience. "If I have to do business with your
people much longer, Mr. Stanton, I shall certainly suggest that they put
a man in charge out here who can control his temper. I have acted in
perfect good faith with you from the beginning. What you say is true;
our man did return from the Topaz last night. But I thought it wise to
make a few investigations on my own account before we should be
committed to the course you advocated, and it is fortunate for us that I
did. Here is Mr. Richlander's letter."
Stanton read the letter through hastily, punctuating its final sentence
with a brittle oath.
"And you've muddled over this all day, when every hour is worth more to
us than your one-horse bank could earn in a year?" he rapped out. "What
have you done? Have you telegraphed this sheriff?"
"No; and neither will you when I tell you the facts. I was afraid you
might go off at half-cock, as usual, if I turned the matter over to you.
You see what Mr. Richlander says, and you will note his description of
the man Smith who is wanted in Lawrenceville. It doesn't tally in any
respect with Baldwin's treasurer, and the common name aroused my
suspicions at once. We had nothing to go on unless we could identify our
man definitely, so I took the straightforward course and went to Miss
Richlander."
Stanton's laugh was a derisive shout.
"You need a guardian, Kinzie; you do, for a fact!" he sneered. "You sit
here, day in and day out, like a greedy old spider in the middle of a
web, clawing in a man-fly every time the door opens, but what you don't
know about women--Bah! you make my back ache! Of course, the girl pulled
the wool over your eyes; any woman could do that!"
"You are not gaining anything by being abusive, Stanton. As I have said,
it is fortunate for all of us that I took the matter into my own hands
and used a little ordinary common sense. There are two Smiths, just as I
suspected when I read Mr. Richlander's letter. Miss Richlander didn't
ask me to take her word for it. She called in a young man named Jibbey,
who arrived here, direct from Lawrenceville, as I understand, last
evening. He is a banker's son, and he knows both Smiths. This man of
Baldwin's is not the one Mr. Richlander is trying to describe in that
letter."
Stanton bit the tip from a cigar and struck a light.
"Kinzie," he said, "you've got me guessing. If you are really the easy
mark you are trying to tell me you are, you have no business running a
bank. I'm going to be charitable and put it the other way around. You
think we're going to lose out, and you are trying to throw me off the
scent. You had a long talk with Colonel Baldwin this morning--I kept
cases on that, too--and you figured that you'd make money by seesawing
again. I'm glad to be able to tell you that you are just about
twenty-four hours too late."
The round-bodied banker righted his pivot-chair with a snap and his lips
were puffed out like the lips of a swimmer who sees the saving plank
drifting out of reach.