hardly know where they do live – always together, Harkey’s house or Fenderson’s. So I mistrusted, natural enough, that ’twas Miss Edith he was waitin’ on. But I was mistook. Just in time to save his life from my bloody and brutal designs he began tolling Miss Lyn to one side to look at sunsets and books and such, givin’ me a chance to buzz Miss Edith alone. Good thing for him. That’s why I’m lettin’ you tag along to-night – you can entertain Pete Harkey and Ma Fenderson and the old man, so’s they won’t pester me and Hobby.”
“Like fun I will! If you fellows had any decent feeling at all you’d both of you clear out and give me a chance.”
“Now, deary, you hadn’t ought to talk like that – indeed you hadn’t!” protested Adam. “You plumb distress me. You ought to declare yourself, feller. I’d always hate it if I was to slay you, and then find out I’d been meddlin’ with Hobby Lull’s private affairs. I’d hate that – I sure would!”
“Well now, there’s no use of your askin’ me for advice.” Charlie’s eyebrows shrugged, and so did his shoulders. “You’ll have to decide these things for yourself. Say, you mangy, moth-eaten, slab-sided, long, lousy, lop-eared parallelopipedon, are you goin’ to be all night dollin’ up? Let’s ride!”
“Don’t blame you for bein’ impatient. Hob, he’s there now.” Face and voice expressed fine tolerance; Adam looked into a scrap of broken mirror for careful knotting of a gay necktie.
“I won’t be sorry to see Hob once more, at that,” observed Charlie. “Always liked Lull. Took to him first time I ever saw him. That was seven years ago, when I was only a kid.”
“Only a kid! Only – Great Cæsar’s ghost, what are you now?”
“I’m twenty-five years old in my stocking feet. And here’s how I met up with Lull. El Paso had a big ball game on with Silver City, and Hob, he wanted to be umpire. Nobody on either team would hear of it, and not one of the fifteen hundred rip-roarin’, howlin’ fans. It was sure a mean mess while it lasted. You see, there was a lot of money up on the game.”
“And who umpired?”
“Hob.”
IV
“Money was so scarce in that country that the babies had to cut their teeth on certified checks.”
“The cauldrified and chittering truth.”
“As I was a-tellin’ you, when I got switched off,” said Adam, in the starlit road, “I found gold dust in ’Pache Cañon nigh onto a year ago. Not much – just a color – but it set me to thinkin’.”
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