The Lady of Big Shanty. F. Berkeley Smith

at my head.

      "I knew him the minute I laid eyes on him. It was Bob Dinsmore, who killed Jim Bailey over at Long Pond. He'd been hiding out for months. He was not more than thirty years old, but he looked fifty; there was a warrant out for him and a reward to take him dead or alive. He kept the gun pointed, drawing a fine sight on a spot between my left eye and my ear.

      "'Hold on, Bob!' said I; 'sit down.' He didn't speak, but he lifted the muzzle of his gun a little, and there was a look came into his eyes, half crying, half like a dog cornered to fight.

      "'S-s-h!' said I; 'you'll wake up Ed.'

      "'I got to kill ye, Bill,' said he.

      "'Sit down,' I said, for I saw he was so weak his thin legs were trembling. 'Neither Ed nor I are going to give you away—sit down,' and I shook Ed. He sat up blinking like an old toad in a hard shower. 'By whimey!' said Ed, staring at Bob as if he had seen a ghost.

      "'I'm hongry, Bill,' said Bob. 'Bill, I'm hongry,' and he began to stagger and cry like a baby. I got hold of his rifle and Ed caught him just as he fainted.

      "By and by he came to and Ed and I fixed up a stiff hooker of liquor and some hot tea and gave him a mouthful at a time. Just before daylight he rose on one elbow and lay there following us with his eyes, for he was too weak to talk. It seemed as if he was clean beat out and that his nerve was gone. What grit he had he had used up keeping away from the law."

      Again Holcomb paused—the round table was as silent as a court room before a verdict.

      "Neither Ed nor I liked the idea of being caught with Dinsmore," he resumed, "with three counties after him harder than an old dog after a five-pronged buck, so when it came daylight we shifted camp over back of a fire-slash where I knew all hell couldn't find him. We had to carry him most of the way. That was on a Wednesday. We never said anything to him about his killing Bailey—he knew we knew. We fed him the best we knew how. Saturday, 'long toward night, I killed a small deer, and the broth did him good.

      "In a couple of days—Hold on, I've got ahead of my story; it was Sunday night when Bob said: 'Boys' said he, as near as I can repeat it in his dialect—'you've treated me like a humin, but I dassent stay here. It ain't fair to you. What I done I done with a reason. You've heard tell, most likely, that I been seen in Lower Saranac 'bout three weeks ago, ain't ye?'

      "'Yes,' said Ed, 'we heard something about it. That Jew horse-trader, Bergstein, told us, but there warn't nobody that seen ye, that was sure it was you.'

      "'They lied then,' said Bob, 'for there was more'n a dozen in the village that day that knowed me and warn't mistook 'bout who I was. As to that red-nosed Jew, Bergstein, he'll quit talkin' 'bout me and everythin' else if I kin ever draw a bead on him.'

      "Then Bob began to tell us how he walked into the big hotel at Saranac about noon and flung a hind-quarter of venison on the counter in front of the clerk and said: 'What I come for is a decent meal; I ain't got no money, but I guess that'll pay for it.' The clerk got white around the gills, but he didn't say anything; he just took the venison and showed Bob into the big dining hall. Bob says they gave him the meal, and he kept eating everything around him with his Winchester across his knees. There wasn't a soul that spoke to him except the hired girl that waited on him, although the dining room was crowded with summer boarders.

      "'Tea or coffee?' asked the hired girl when he had eaten his pie.

      "'No, thank ye,' says Bob, 'but I won't never forgit ye if ye can git me four boxes of matches.' Bob said she was gone a minute and when she came back she had the matches for him under her apron. 'Good luck to ye, Bob,' she says—her cheeks red, and her mouth trembling. It was Myra Hathaway—he'd known her since she was a little girl. 'Bob, for God's sake go,' she begged—'there's trouble coming from the village.'

      "It wasn't long before Bob crossed Alder Brook about forty rods this side of the Gull Rock. They saw his tracks where he crossed the next day, but Bob had the matches, and the sheriff and about forty that went out to get him came back that night looking kind of down in the mouth. There wasn't a sign of him after he crossed Alder Brook. He knew those woods like a partridge. When he got through telling how he got the square meal at Lower Saranac, Ed said to him:

      "'Bob, you're welcome to what I've got,' and I told him, 'What I've got is yours, and you know it.'

      "He tried to say a little something, but he choked up, then he said:

       'Boys, I'm sick of bein' hounded. There's been nights and days when

       I've most died; if I can only get into Canady there won't none of 'em

       git me.'

      "Ed and I had about eleven dollars between us. 'That will get you there, Bob,' I said, 'if you look sharp and don't take risks and keep to the timber.' We gave him the eleven dollars and what cartridges and matches we could spare, and what was left of the deer. I never saw a fellow so grateful; he didn't say anything, but I saw his old grit come back to him. That was Monday night, and about nine o'clock we turned in. Before daylight I woke up to attend to the fire and saw he was gone."

      The men drew a deep breath. Keene and the actor looked blankly at each other. Compared to the tale just ended, their own stories seemed but a reflex of utterly selfish lives. Even the Emperor experienced a strange thrill—possibly the first real sensation he had known since he was a boy. As to Thayor—he had hung on every word that fell from Holcomb's lips.

      "And what motive had Dinsmore in killing Bailey?" asked Thayor, nervously, when the others had gone to the hall for their coffee and liqueurs. "I asked your father but he did not answer me, and yet he must have known."

      "Oh, yes, he knew, Mr. Thayor. Everybody knows, our way, but it's one of those things we don't talk about—but I'll tell you. It was about his wife."

      Thayor folded his napkin in an absent way, laid it carefully beside his plate, unfolded it again and tossed it in a heap upon the table, and said with a certain tenderness in his tone:

      "And did he get away to Canada, Holcomb?"

      "No, sir; his little girl fell ill, and he wouldn't leave her."

      "And the woman, Holcomb—was she worth it?" continued Thayor. There was a strange tremor in his voice now—so much so that the young man fastened his eyes on the banker's, wondering at the cause.

      "She was worth a lot to Bob, sir," replied Holcomb slowly. "They had grown up together."

CHAPTER TWO

       Table of Contents

      That same afternoon the banker passed through the polished steel grille of his new home by means of a flat key attached to a plain gold chain.

      The house, like its owner, had a certain personality of its own, although it lacked his simplicity; its square mass being so richly carved that it seemed as if the faintest stroke of the architect's soft pencil had made a dollar mark. So vast, too, was its baronial hall and sweeping stairway in pale rose marble, that its owner might have entered it unnoticed, had not Blakeman, the butler, busying himself with the final touches to a dinner table of twenty covers, heard his master's alert step in the hall and hurried to relieve him of his coat and hat. Before, however, the man could reach him, Thayor had thrown both aside, and had stepped to a carved oak table on which were carefully arranged ten miniature envelopes. He bent over them for a moment and then turning to the butler asked in an impatient tone:

      "How many people are coming to dinner, Blakeman?"

      "Twenty, sir," answered Blakeman, his face preserving its habitual

       Sphinx-like immobility.

      "Um!" muttered Thayor.

      "Can, I get you anything, sir?"

      "No, thank you, Blakeman. I have just left the Club."

      "A dinner of twenty, eh?" continued Thayor, as Blakeman