Webster—Man's Man. Peter B. Kyne

iconoclast. If you had ever gotten far enough from this club during the past fifteen years to get a breath of real fresh air, you'd understand why I want to enjoy civilization for a week or two before I go back to a mine superintendent's cabin on some bleak hill. No, sir-ee. Old Jeremiah Q. Work and I have had a falling out. I'm going on to New York and attend the opera, see all the good plays, mush around through the Metropolitan Museum of Art, drink tea, and learn to tango.” Webster sighed gustily. “Lord, Neddy, how I long for the fleshpots. I've slept under the desert stars so long I want electric signs for a change. Bacon and beans and sour dough are wonderful when one hasn't something better, but I crave an omelette soufflé drenched in cognac, and the cognac afire. Yes, and I want an obsequious waiter to hurry in with it and then take a dollar tip from me afterward for all the world like he was doing me a favour by accepting it. Dad burn your picture, Neddy, I want some class! I've been listening to a dago shift-boss playing the accordeon for three years—and he could only play three tunes. Now I want Sousa's band. I want to hive up in a swell hotel and leave a call for six o'clock—and then when they call me, I want to curse them, roll over, and go to sleep again. I've been bathing in tepid, dirty water in a redwood sluice-box, and now I desire a steam room and a needle shower and an osteopath. I've been bossing Greasers and Italians and was forced to learn their language to get results, and now I want to speak my mother tongue to my old friends. The last funny story I heard had whiskers on it when Rameses was playing hop-scotch in Memphis, Egypt, and by thunder I'm going to have a new deal all around.”

      “Very well, Jack. Don't excite yourself. I'll give you exactly thirty days to sicken of it all—and then I shall come and claim my property.”

      “Neddy, I'll not work for you.”

      “Oh, yes, you will, John.”

      “No, sir, I'm mad. I won't play.”

      “You're it. I just tagged you.”

      “I require a rest—but unfold your proposition, Neddy. I was born a poor, weak vessel consumed with a curiosity that was ever my undoing. I can only protest that this is no way to treat a friend.”

      “Nonsense! My own brother wants this job, and I have refused to give it to him. Business is business—and I've saved it for you.”

      Jerome leaned forward and laid his finger confidentially on Webster's knee; whereat the lighthearted wanderer carefully lifted the finger, brushed an imaginary speck of dirt from it, and set it down again. “Be serious, you ingrate,” Jerome protested. ''Listen! I've been working for two years on a consolidation up near Telluride, and I've just put it across. Jack, it's the biggest thing in the country——

      Webster closed his eyes and crooned:

      “I'm dying for some one to love me;

      I'm tired of living alone;

      I want to be somebody's darling,

      To be queen upon somebody's throne.”

      “Well, you'll be king on the throne of the Colorado Consolidated Mines Company, Limited. English capital, Jack. Pay 'em 6 per cent, and they'll call you blessed. There's twenty-five thousand a year in it, with a house and a good cook and an automobile and a chauffeur, and you can come to town whenever you please, provided you don't neglect the company's interests—and I know you're not that kind of an engineer.”

      “Do I have to put some money into it, Neddy?”

      “Not necessarily, although I should advise it. I can let you in on the ground floor for that hundred thousand of yours, guarantee you a handsome profit and in all probability a big clean-up.”

      “I feel myself slipping, Neddy. Nevertheless, the tail goes with the hide. I'm not in the habit of asking my friends to guarantee my investments, and if you say it's all right, I'll spread what I have left of the hundred thousand when I report for duty. What's the news around this mortuary, anyhow? Who's dead and who's alive?”

      “It's been a tremendous job getting this consolidation over, Jack. When——”

      “In pity's name! Spare me. I've heard all I want to hear about your confounded consolidation. News! News! Give me news! I had to beg for a drink——”

      “I might remind you that your manners have not improved with age, Jack Webster. You haven't thanked me for that job.”

      “No—nor shall I. Mose, you black sinner, how dare you appear before me again without that stinger?”

      Mose, the aged coloured porter of the Engineers' Club, flashed a row of ivories and respectfully re-turned the democratic greeting.

      “Letter for you, suh. The secretary told me to give it to you, Mistah Webster.”

      “Thank you, Mose. Speak up, Neddy, and tell me something. Ever hear anything of Billy Geary?” He was tearing the edge of the envelope the while he gazed at Jerome, who was rubbing his fat hands together after the fashion of elderly men who are well pleased with themselves.

      “You have a chance to become one of the greatest and richest mining engineers in the world, Jack,” he answered, “now that you've cut loose from that young crook Geary. I don't know what's become of him, and neither does anybody else. For that matter, nobody cares.”

      “I do—and you can take the brief end of that bet for your last white chip. Don't let me hear you or anybody else say anything against Billy Geary. That boy goes for my money, every turn in the box. Don't make any mistakes about that, old-timer.”

      Webster's face suddenly was serious; the bantering intonation in his voice was gone, and a new, slightly strident note had crept into it. But Jerome, engrossed in his own affairs, failed to observe the menace in that swift transition of mood in his companion. He waved his hand soothingly.

      “All right, old Johnny Pepper-box, have it your own way. Nevertheless, I'm a little mystified. The last I knew of you two, you had testified against him in the high-grader trials at Cripple Creek, and he had pulled out under a cloud, even after his acquittal.”

      “Give a dog a bad name, and it will stick to him,” Webster retorted. “Of course I testified against him. As engineer for the Mine Owners' Association, I had to. The high-grade ore was found in his assay office, and the circumstantial evidence was complete, and I admit Billy was acquitted merely because I and others could not swear positively that the ore came from any certain mine. It was the same old story, Neddy. It's become history in all mining camps. You can be morally certain that high-grade ore has been stolen from your mine, but unless you catch the ore thief in the act, how can you prove it? High-grade ore is blind goods and is not confined to any certain man-owned spot on this wicked earth—so there you are! I suppose you read the newspaper reports and believed them, just as everybody else does.”

      “Well, forget it, Jack. It's all over long ago, and forgotten.”

      “It wasn't all over so long ago as you seem to think. I suppose you knew the Holman gang was afterward sent to the penitentiary for those same high-grade operations?”

      “Yes.”

      “But I'll bet my new plug hat you never knew I was the Hawkshaw that sent them there! You bet I was! Billy Geary's acquittal didn't end my interest in the case—not by a jugful! I fought the case against the friends of the Holman crew among the mine owners themselves; and it cost me my good job, my prestige as a mining engineer, and thirty thousand dollars of money that I'd slaved to get together. They squeezed me, Neddy—squeezed me hard like a lemon, and threw me away, but I got them! I should tell a man! Of course you never knew this, Neddy, and for that matter, neither does Geary. I wish he did. We were good friends once. I certainly was mighty fond of that boy.”

      He drew the letter from the envelope and slowly opened it, his mind not upon the letter, but upon Billy Geary.

      “And you never heard what became of Geary?”

      “Not a word. I was too busy wondering what was to become of me. I couldn't get a job anywhere in Colorado,