The Law-Breakers

In spite of the lightness of Kate’s manner her words were not without their effect upon Fyles. There was a ring of sincerity in them that would not be denied. But its effect upon him was not that which she could have wished. His face set almost sternly. The challenge of the woman had stirred him out of his calm assurance, but it was in a direction which she could scarcely have expected. He thrust his sunburned face forward more aggressively, and challenged her in return.

“What is this man to you?” he demanded, his square jaws seeming to clip his question the more shortly.

In a moment Kate’s face was flushing her resentment. Her dark eyes were sparkling with a sudden leaping anger.

“You have no right to – ask me that,” she cried. But Fyles had committed himself. Nor would he draw back.

“Haven’t I?” he laughed harshly. “All’s fair in love and – war. We are at war – officially.”

The woman’s flushing cheeks remained, but the sparkle of her eyes had changed again to an ironical light.

“War – yes. Perhaps you’re right. The only courtesies recognized in war are observed in the prize ring, and in international warfare. Our warfare must be less exalted, and permits hitting – below the belt. I’ve told you what Charlie is to me, and I have told you truly. I am trying to defend an innocent man, who is no more to me than a brother, or – or son. I am doing so because of his peculiar ailments which make him well-nigh incapable of helping himself. You see, he does not care. His own safety, his own welfare, are nothing to him. It is for that reason, for the way he acts in consequence of these things, that all men believe him a rogue, and a – a waster. I tell you he is neither.”

She finished up a little breathlessly. She had permitted her loyalty and anxiety to carry her beyond the calm fencing she had intended.

But Fyles remained unmoved, except that the harshness had gone out of his manner.

“It is not I who am obstinate,” he said soberly. “It is you, Miss Kate. What if I told you I had irrefutable circumstantial evidence against him? Would that turn you from your faith in him?”

The woman shook her head.

“It would be merely circumstantial evidence,” she said. “God knows how circumstance has filled our penitentiaries wrongfully,” she added bitterly.

“And but for circumstance our population of wrongdoers at large would be greater by a thousand per cent.,” retorted the officer.

“That is supposition,” smiled Kate.

“Which does not rob it of its possibility in fact.”

The two sat looking at each other, silently defiant. Kate was smiling. A great excitement was thrilling her, and she liked this man all the better for his blunt readiness for combat, even with her.

Fyles was wondering at this woman, half angry, half pleased. Her strength and readiness appealed to him as a wonderful display.

He was the first to speak, and, in doing so, he felt he was acknowledging his worsting in the encounter.

“It’s – it’s impossible to fight like this,” he said lamely. “I am not accustomed to fight with women.”

“Does it matter, so long as a woman can fight?” Kate cried quickly. “Chivalry?” she went on contemptuously. “That’s surely a survival of ages when the old curfew rang, and a lot of other stupid notions filled folks’ minds. I – I just love to fight.”

Her smile was so frankly infectious that Fyles found himself responding. He heaved a sigh.

“It’s no good,” he said almost hopelessly. “You must stick to your belief, and I to mine. All I hope, Miss Kate, is that when I’ve done with this matter the pain I’ve inflicted on you will not be unforgivable.”

The woman’s eyes were turned away. They had become very soft as she gazed over at the distant view of Charlie’s house.

“I don’t think it will be,” she said gently. Then with a quick return to her earlier manner: “You see, you will never get the chance of hurting Charlie.” A moment later she inquired naively: “When is the cargo coming in?”

But Fyles’s exasperation was complete.

“When?” he cried. “Why, when this scamp is ready for it. It’s – it’s no use, Miss Kate. I can’t stop, or – or I’ll be forgetting you are a woman, and say ‘Damn!’ I admit you have bested me, but – young Bryant hasn’t. I – ” he broke off, laughing in spite of his annoyance, and Kate cordially joined in.

“But he will,” she cried, as Peter began to move away. “Good-bye, Mr. Fyles,” she added, in her ironical fashion as she picked up her sewing. “I can get on with these important matters – now.”

The man’s farewell was no less cordial, and his better sense told him that in accepting his defeat at her hands he had won a good deal in another direction where he hoped to finally achieve her capitulation.

While the skirmish between Stanley Fyles and Kate Seton was going on, the object of it was discussing the doings of the police and the prospect of the coming struggle with Big Brother Bill on the veranda of his house.

He was leaning against one of its posts while Bill reposed on the hard seat of a Windsor chair, seeking what comfort he could find in the tremendous heat by abandoning all superfluous outer garments.

Charlie’s face was darkly troubled. His air was peevishly irritable.

“Bill,” he said, with a deep thrill of earnestness in his voice, as he thrust his brown, delicate hands into the tops of his trousers. “All the trouble in the world’s just about to start, if I’m a judge of the signs of things. There’s a whole crowd of the police in the valley now. They’re camped higher up. They think we don’t know, but we do – all of us. I wonder what they think they’re going to do?”

His manner became more excited, and his voice grew deeper and deeper.

“They think they’re going to get a big haul of liquor. They think they’re going to get me. I tell you, Bill, that for men trained to smelling things out, they’re blunderers. Their methods are clumsy as hell. I could almost laugh, if – if I didn’t feel sick at their coming around.”

Bill stirred uneasily.

“If there were no whisky-running here they wouldn’t be around,” he said pointedly.

Charlie eyed him curiously.

“No,” he said. Then he added, “And if there were no whisky-running there’d be no village here. If there were no village here we shouldn’t be here. Kate and her sister wouldn’t be here. Nothing would be here, but the old pine – that goes on forever. This village lives on the prohibition law. Fyles may have a reputation, but he’s clumsy – damned clumsy. I’d like to see ahead – the next few days.”

“He’s smelling a cargo – coming in, isn’t he?” Bill’s tact was holding him tight.

Again Charlie looked at him curiously before he replied.

“That’s how they reckon,” he said guardedly, at last.

Bill had turned away, vainly searching his unready wit for the best means of carrying on the discussion. Suddenly his eyes lit, and he pointed across at the Seton’s house.

“Say, who’s that – on that horse? Isn’t it Fyles? He’s talking to some one. Looks like – ”

He broke off. Charlie was staring out in the direction indicated, and, in a moment, his excitement passed, swallowed up in a frowning, brooding light that had suddenly taken possession of his dark eyes.

Bill finally broke the uncomfortable silence.

“It’s – Fyles?” he said.

“Yes, it’s Fyles,” said Charlie, with a sudden suppressed fury. “It’s Fyles – curse him, and he’s talking to – Kate.”

At the sound of his brother’s tone, even Bill realized his blundering. He knew he had fired a train of passion that was to be deplored, even dreaded in his brother. He blamed himself bitterly for his lack of forethought, his absurd want of discretion.

But the mischief was done. Charlie had forgotten everything else.

Bill stirred again in his chair.

“What does he want down there?” he demanded, for lack of something better to say.

“What does he want?” Charlie laughed. It was an unpleasant laugh, a savage laugh. It was a laugh that spoke of sore heart, and feelings crowding with bitterness. “I guess he wants something he’ll never get – while I’m alive.”

He relapsed into moody silence, and a new expression grew in his eyes till it even dominated that which had shone in them before. Bill thought he recognized it. The word “funk” flashed through his mind, and left him wondering. What could Charlie have to fear from Fyles talking to Kate? Did he believe that Kate would let the officer pump her with regard to his, Charlie’s, movements!

Yes, that must be it.

“He won’t get more than five cents for his dollar out of her,” he said, in an effort to console.

Charlie was round on him in a flash.

“Five cents for a dollar? No,” he cried, “nor one cent, nor a fraction of a cent. Fyles is dealing with the cleverest, keenest woman I’ve ever met in all my life. I’m not thinking that way. I’m thinking how almighty easy it is for a man walking a broken trail to trip and smash himself right up. The more sure he is the worse is his fall, because – he takes big chances, and big chances mean big falls. You’ve hit it, Bill, I’m scared – scared to death just now. If I know Fyles there’s going to be one hell of a time around here, and, if you value your future, get clear while you can. I’m scared, Bill, scared and mad. I can’t stand to watch that man talking to Kate. I’m not scared of man or devil, but I’m scared – scared to death when I see that. I must get out of this. I must get away, or – ”

He moved off the veranda in a frantic state of nervous passion.

Bill sprang from his seat and was at his brother’s side in two great strides, and his big hand fell with no little force upon the latter’s arm and held it.

“What do you mean?” he cried apprehensively. “Where – where are you going?”

With surprising strength Charlie flung him off. He turned, facing him with angry eyes and flushed face.

“Don’t you dare lay hand on me like that again, Bill,” he cried dangerously. “I don’t stand for that from – anybody. I’m going down the village, since you want to know. I’m going down to O’Brien’s. And you can get it right now that I wouldn’t stand the devil himself butting in to stop me.”

CHAPTER XXIII
STORM CLOUDS

A dispirited creature made its way down to the Setons’ house that same evening. Big Brother Bill felt there was not one single clear thought in his troubled head, at least, not one worth thinking. He was weighted down by a hazy conception of the position of things, in a manner that came near to destroying the very root of his optimism.

One or two things settled upon his mind much in the manner of mental vampires. He knew that Charlie was threatened, and he knew that Charlie knew it, and made no attempt to protect himself. He knew that Charlie was also scared – frightened out of all control of himself in a manner that was absurdly contradictory. He knew that he was now at the saloon for the purpose of drowning his hopeless feelings in the maddening spirit O’Brien dispensed. He knew that his own baggage had at last arrived from Heaven only knew where, and he wished it hadn’t, for it left him feeling even more burdened than ever with the responsibilities of the pestilential valley. He knew that he was beginning to hate the police, and Fyles, almost as much as Charlie did. He knew that if prevailing conditions weren’t careful he would lose his temper with them, and make things hot for somebody or something. But, more than all else, he knew that Helen Seton was more than worth all the worry and anxiety he was enduring.

In consequence of all this he arrayed himself in a light tweed suit, a clean, boiled shirt and collar, a tie, that might well have startled the natives of his home city, and a panama hat which he felt was necessary to improve the tropical appearance of his burnt and perspiring features, and hastened to Helen’s presence for comfort and support.

The girl had been waiting for him. She looked the picture of diaphanous coolness in the shade of the house, lounging in an old wicker chair, with its fellow, empty, drawn up beside her. There were no feminine eyes to witness her little schemes, and Bill? – why, Bill was delighted beyond words that she was there, also the empty chair, also, that, as he believed, while she was wholly unconscious of the fact, the girl’s attitude and costume were the most innocently pleasing things he had ever beheld with his two big, blue, appreciative eyes.

He promptly told her so.

“Say, Hel,” he cried, “you don’t mind me calling you ‘Hel,’ do you? – you see, everything delightful seems to be associated with ‘Hell’ nowadays. If you could see yourself and the dandy picture you make you’d kind of understand how I feel just about now.”

The girl smiled her delight.

“Maybe I do understand,” she said. “You see, I don’t always sit around in this sort of fancy frock. Then, no girl of sense musses herself into an awkward pose when six foot odd of manhood’s getting around her way. No, no Big Brother Bill. That chair didn’t get there by itself. Two carefully manicured hands put it there, after their owner had satisfied herself that her mirror hadn’t made a mistake, and that she was looking quite her most attractive. You see, you’d promised to come to see me this evening, and – well, I’m woman enough to be very pleased. That’s all.”

Bill’s sun-scorched face deepened its ruddy hue with youthful delight.

“Say, you did all this for – for me?”

Helen laughed.

“Why, yes, and told you the various details to be appreciated, because I was scared to death you wouldn’t get them right.”

Bill sat himself down, and set the chair creaking as he turned it about facing her. He held out his hands.

“I haven’t seen the manicuring racket right, yet,” he laughed.

Helen stretched out her two hands toward him for inspection. He promptly seized them in his, and pretended to examine them.

“The prettiest, softest, jolliest – ”

But the girl snatched them away.

“That’s not inspection. That’s – ”

“Sure it’s not,” retorted Bill easily. “It’s true.”

“And absurd.”

“What – the truth?”

Bill’s blue eyes were widely inquiring.

“Sometimes.”

The smile died out of the man’s eyes, and his big face became doleful.

“Yes, I s’pose it is.”

Helen set up.

“What’s gone wrong – now? What truth is – absurd?” she demanded.

The man shrugged.

“Oh, everything. Say, have you ever heard of a disease of the – the brain called ‘partly hatched’?”

The girl’s eyes twinkled.

“I don’t kind of remember it.”

“No, I don’t s’pose you do. I don’t think anybody ever has it but me. I’ve got it bad. This valley’s given it me, and – and if it isn’t careful it’s going to get fatal.”

Helen looked around at him in pretended sympathy.

“What’s the symptoms? Nothing outward? I mean that tie – that’s not a symptom, is it?”

Bill shook his head. He was smiling, but beneath his smile there was a certain seriousness.

“No. There’s no outward signs – yet. I got it through thinking too – too young. You see, I’ve done so much thinking in the last week. If it had been spread over, say six months, the hatching might have got fixed right. But it’s been too quick, and things have got addled. You see, if a hen turned on too much pressure of heat her eggs would get fried – or addled. That’s how my brain is. It’s addled.”

Helen nodded with a great show of seriousness which the twitching corners of her pretty mouth belied.

“I always thought you’d got a trouble back of your – head. But you’d best tell me. You see, I don’t get enough pressure of thinking to hatch anything. Maybe between us we can fix your mental eggs right.”

Bill’s big eyes lit with relief and hope.

“That’s bright of you. You surely are the cutest girl ever. You must have got a heap of brain to spare.”

Helen could no longer restrain her laughter.

“It’s mostly all – spare. Now, then, tell me all your troubles.”

The great creature at her side looked doubtful and puzzled.

“I don’t know just where to begin. There’s such a heap, and I’ve worried thinking about it, till – till – ”

Helen sat up and propped her chin in her hands with her elbows on her knees.

“When you don’t know where to begin just start with the first thought in your head, and – and – ramble.”

Bill brightened up.

“Sure that’s best?”

“Sure.”

The man sighed in relief.

“That’s made a heap of difference,” he cried. Then he took a handkerchief from his pocket, removed his panama and mopped his forehead. He gave a big gulp in the midst of the process, and spoke as though he were defying an enemy. “Will you marry me?” he demanded, and sat up glaring at her, with his hat and handkerchief poised in either hand.

The girl gave him a quick look. Then she flung herself back in her chair and laughed.

“We – we are talking of troubles,” she protested.

Bill replaced his hat, and restored his handkerchief to its pocket.

“Troubles? Troubles? Isn’t that trouble enough to start with? It’s – it’s the root of it all,” he declared. “I’m – I’m just crazy about you. And every time I try to think about Charlie and the police, and – and the scallywags of the valley, I – I find you mixed up with it all, and get so tangled up that I don’t know where I am, or – or why. Say, have you ever been crazy about anybody? Some feller, for instance? It’s the worst worrying muddle ever happened. First you’re pleased – then you cuss them. Then you sort of sit dreaming all sorts of fool things that haven’t any sense at all. Then you want to make rhymes and things about eyes, and flowers, and moons, and feet, and laces and bits. You feel all over that everything else has got no sense to it, and is just so much waste of time thinking about it. You sort of feel that all men are fools but yourself, and other females aren’t women, but just images. You sort of get the notion the world’s on a pivot, and that pivot’s just yourself, and if you weren’t there there’d be a bust up, and most everything would get chasing glory, and you don’t care a darn, anyway, if they did. Say, when you get clean crazy about anybody, same as I am about you, you find yourself hating everybody that comes near them. You get notions that every man is conspiring to tell the girl what a perfect fool you are, that they’re worrying to boost you right out with her. You hate her, because you think she thinks you are a simpleton, and can’t see your good points, which are so obvious to yourself. You hate yourself, you hate life, you hate the sunlight and the trees, and your food, and – and everything. And you wouldn’t have things different, or stop making such a fool of yourself, no – not if hell froze over. Will – will you marry me?”

Helen’s humor suddenly burst the bonds of all restraint. She sat there laughing until she nearly choked.

Bill waited with a patience that seemed inexhaustible. Then, as the girl’s mirth began to lessen, he put his question again with dogged persistence.

“Will you marry me?”

“Oh, dear! Oh, dear! Of all the – ”

“Will you marry me?” the man persisted, his great face flushing.

Helen abruptly sobered. The masterful tone somehow sent a delighted thrill through her nerves.

She nodded.

“Of course I will. I – intended to from the first moment I saw your big, funny face with Stanley – ”

“You mean that, Hel? You really – meant to marry me? You did?”

The man’s happy excitement was something not easily to be forgotten. He sprang from his chair, reached out his powerful hands, caught the girl about the waist, and picked her up in his arms as he might have picked up a child. His great bear-like hug was a monstrous thing to endure, but Helen was more than willing to endure it, as also his kisses, which he rained upon her happy, laughing face.

But the girl’s sense of the fitness of things soon came to her rescue. The ridiculousness, the undignified figure she must appear, held in her great lover’s arms, set her struggling to free herself, and, in a few moments, he set her once more upon her feet, and stood laughing down into her blushing face.

“Say,” he cried, with a great laugh, “I don’t care a cuss if my brains never hatch out. You’re going to be my wife. You, the girl I’m crazy to death about. Fyles and all the rest can go hang. Gee!”

Helen looked up at him. Then she smoothed out her ruffled frock, and patted her hair into its place.

“Well,” she cried, with a happy laugh, “I’ve heard some queer proposals from the boys of this valley when they were drunk, but for a sober, educated man, I think you’ve made the funniest proposal that any one ever listened to. Oh, Bill, Bill, you’ve done a foolish thing. I’m a shameless man-hunter. I came out west to find a husband, and I’ve found one. I wanted to marry you all along. I meant to marry you.”

Bill’s laugh rang out in a great guffaw.

“Bully!” he cried. “What’s the use of marrying a girl who doesn’t want to marry you?”

“But she ought to pretend – at first.”

“Not on your life. No pretense for me, Hel. Give me the girl who’s honest enough to love me, and let me know it.”

“Bill! How – dare you? How dare you say I loved you and told you so? I’ve – I’ve a good mind not to marry – Say, Bill, you are a – joke. Now, sit right down, and tell me all about those – those other things worrying you.”

In a moment a shadow crossed the man’s cheerful face. But he obediently resumed his seat, and somehow, when Helen sat down, their chairs were as close together as their manufacturer had made possible.

“It’s Charlie – Charlie, and the police,” said Bill, in a despondent tone. “And Kate, too. I don’t know. Say, Hel, what’s – what’s going to happen? Fyles is hot after Charlie. Charlie don’t care a curse. But there’s something scaring him that bad he’s nearly crazy. Then there’s Kate. He saw Kate talking to Fyles, and he got madder than – hell. And now he’s gone off to O’Brien’s, and it don’t even take any thinking to guess what for. I tell you he’s so queer I can’t do a thing with him. I’m not smart enough. I could just break him in my two hands if I took hold of him to keep him home and out of trouble, but what’s the use? He’s crazy about Kate, he’s crazy about drink, he’s crazy about everything, but keeping clear of the law. That’s what I came to tell you about – that, and to fix up about getting married.”

The man’s words left a momentary dilemma in the girl’s mind. For a moment she was at a loss how to answer him. It seemed impossible to accept seriously his tale of anxiety and worry, and yet – . The same tale from any other would have seemed different. But coming from Bill, and just when she was so full of an almost childish happiness at the thought that this great creature loved her, and wanted to marry her, it took her some moments to reduce herself to a condition of judicial calm, sufficient to obtain the full significance of his anxious complaint.

When at last she spoke her eyes were serious, so serious that Bill wondered at it. He had never seen them like that before.

“It’s dreadful,” she said in a low tone. “Dreadful.”

Bill jumped at the word.

“Dreadful? My God, it’s awful when you think he’s my brother, and – and Kate’s your sister. I can’t see ahead. I can’t see where things are – are drifting. That’s the devil of it. I wish to goodness they’d given me less beef and more brain,” he finished up helplessly.

Helen displayed no inclination to laugh. Somehow now that this simple man was here, now that the responsibility of him had devolved upon her, a delightful feeling of gentle motherliness toward him rose up in her heart, and made her yearn to help him. It was becoming quite easy to take him seriously.

“P’r’aps it’s a good thing you’ve got all that – beef. P’r’aps it’s for the best, you’re so – so strong, and so ready to help. You can’t see ahead. Neither can I. Maybe no one can, but – Fyles. Suppose you and I were standing at the foot of a cliff – a big, high cliff, very dangerous, very dreadful, and some one we both loved was climbing its face, and we saw them reach a point where it looked impossible to go on, or turn back. What could we do? I’ll tell you. We could remain standing there looking on, praying to Providence that they might get through, and holding ourselves ready to bear a hand when opportunity offered, and, failing that, do our utmost to break their fall.”

Bill’s appreciation suddenly illuminated his ingenuous face.

“Say,” he cried admiringly. “You’ve hit it. Sure, we can’t climb up and help. It would mean disaster to both, with no one left to help. Say, I’m glad I’m big and strong. That’s it, we’ll stand – by. You’ll think, and I’ll do what you tell me. By Jing! That’s made everything different. We’ll stand by, and break their fall. I could never have thought of that – I couldn’t, sure.”

It was Helen’s turn to display enthusiasm. It was an enthusiasm inspired by her lover’s acceptance of her suggestion.

“But we’re not going to just watch and watch and do nothing. We must keep on Fyles’s trail. We must keep close behind Charlie, and when we see the fall coming on we must be ready to thrust out a hand. You never know, we may beat the whole game in spite of Charlie. We may be able to save him in spite of himself. No harm must come to Kate through him. I can’t see where it can come, except – that he is mad about her, and she is mad about – some one else.”

“Fyles?” Bill hazarded.

Helen looked around at him in amused admiration. She nodded.

“You’re getting too clever for me. You will be thinking for us both soon.”

Bill denied the accusation enthusiastically.

“Never,” he exclaimed. And after that he drifted into a lover’s rhapsody of his own inferiority and unworthiness.

Thus, for a while, the more serious cares were set aside for that brief lover’s paradise when two people find their focus filled to overflowing with that precious Self, which we are told always to deny. Fortunately human nature does not readily yield to such behests, and so life is not robbed of its mainspring, and the whole machinery of human nature is not reduced to a chaotic bundle of useless wheels.

For all Helen’s boasted scheming, for all Bill’s lack of brilliancy, these two were just a pair of simple creatures, loyal and honest, and deeply in love. So they dallied as all true lovers must dally with those first precious moments which a Divine Providence permits to flow in full tide but once in a lifetime.

Charlie Bryant was standing at the bar of O’Brien’s saloon. One hand rested on the edge of the counter as though to steady himself. His eyes were bloodshot, a strange pallor left his features ghastly, and the combination imparted a subtle appearance of terror which the shrewd saloonkeeper interpreted in his own fashion as he unfolded his information, and its deductions.

The bar was quite empty otherwise, and the opportunity had been too good for O’Brien to miss.

“Say, I was mighty glad to get them kegs the other night safely. But I’m takin’ no more chances. It’ll see me through for awhile,” he said, as he refilled Charlie’s glass at his own expense. “There’s a big play coming right now, and, if you’ll take advice, you’ll lie low – desprit low.”

“You mean Fyles – as usual,” said Charlie thickly. Then he added as an afterthought: “To hell with Fyles, and all his damned red-coats.”

O’Brien’s quick eyes surveyed his half-drunken customer with a shrewd, contemptuous speculation.

“That sounds like bluff. Hot air never yet beat the p’lice. It needs a darnation clear head, and big acts, to best Fyles. A half-soused bluff ain’t worth hell room.”

Charlie appeared to take no umbrage. His bloodshot eyes were still fixed upon O’Brien’s hard face as he raised his glass with a shaking hand and drained it.

“I don’t need to bluff with no one around worth bluffing,” he said, setting the empty glass down on the counter.

O’Brien’s response was to fold his arms aggressively, and lean forward upon the counter, peering into the delicate, pale face before him.

“See here,” he cried, “a fellow mostly bluffs when he’s scared, or he’s in a corner – like a rat. See? Now it’s to my interest to see Fyles beat clean out of Rocky Springs. It’s that set me gassin’. Get me? So just keep easy, and take what I got to hand out. I’m wise to the game. It’s my business to keep wise. Those two crooks of yours, Pete and Nick, were in this morning, and I heard ’em talkin’. Then I got ’em yarning to me. They’ve got every move Fyles is making dead right. They’re smartish guys, and I feel they’re too smart for you by a sight. If things go their way you’re safe. If there’s a chance of trouble for them you’re up against it.”

Charlie licked his dry lips as the saloonkeeper paused. Then he replaced the sodden end of his cigarette between them. But he remained silent.

“I’ve warned you of them boys before,” O’Brien went on. “But that’s by the way. Now, see here, Fyles has got your play. The boys know that, and in turn have got his play. Fyles knows that to-morrow night you’re running in a big cargo of liquor. The only thing he don’t know is where you cache it. Anyways, he’s got a big force of boys around, and Rocky Springs’ll have a complete chain of patrols around it, to-morrow night. Each man’s got a signal, and when that signal’s given it means he’s located the cargo. Then the others’ll crowd in, and your gang’s to be overwhelmed. Get it? You’ll all be taken – red-handed. I’m guessin’ you know all this all right, all right, and I’m only telling it so you can get the rest clear. How you and your boys get these things I’m not guessing. It’s smart. But here’s the bad stuff. It’s my way to watch folks and draw ’em when I want to get wise. I drew them boys. They’re reckonin’ things are getting hot for ’emselves. They’re scared. They’re reckonin’ the game’s played out, and ain’t worth hell room, with Fyles smelling around. Those boys’ll put you away to Fyles, if they see the pinch coming. And that’s where my interests come in. They’ll put you away sure as death.”

If O’Brien were looking for the effect of his solemn warning he was disappointed. Charlie’s expression remained unchanged. The ghastly white of his features suggested fear, but it was not added to by so much as a flicker of an eyelid.

“That all?” he asked, with a deliberate pause between the words to obtain clear diction.

O’Brien shrugged, but his eyes snapped angrily at this lack of appreciation.

“Ain’t it enough? Say,” his manner had become almost threatening, “I’m not doing things for hoss-play. The folks around can build any old church to ease their souls and make a show. Rocky Springs ain’t the end of all things for me. I’m out after the stuff. I’ll soothe my soul with dollars. That’s why I’m around telling you, because your game’s the thing that’s to give ’em to me. When your game’s played I hit the trail, but as long as you make good Rocky Springs is for me. If you can’t handle your proposition right then I quit you.”