The Three Partners Read online

  CHAPTER VI.

  The abrupt disappearance of Jack Hamlin and the strange lady andgentleman visitor was scarcely noticed by the other guests of the DivideHouse, and beyond the circle of Steptoe and his friends, who were adistinct party and strangers to the town, there was no excitement.Indeed, the hotel proprietor might have confounded them together, and,perhaps, Van Loo was not far wrong in his belief that their identity hadnot been suspected. Nor were Steptoe's followers very much concerned inan episode in which they had taken part only at the suggestion of theirleader, and which had terminated so tamely. That they would have likeda "row," in which Jack Hamlin would have been incidentally forced todisgorge his winnings, there was no doubt, but that their interferencewas asked solely to gratify some personal spite of Steptoe's against VanLoo was equally plain to them. There was some grumbling and outspokencriticism of his methods.

  This was later made more obvious by the arrival of another guest forwhom Steptoe and his party were evidently waiting. He was a short, stoutman, whose heavy red beard was trimmed a little more carefully than whenhe was first known to Steptoe as Alky Hall, the drunkard of Heavy TreeHill. His dress, too, exhibited a marked improvement in quality andstyle, although still characterized in the waist and chest by theunbuttoned freedom of portly and slovenly middle age. Civilization hadrestricted his potations or limited them to certain festivals known as"sprees," and his face was less puffy and sodden. But with the accessionof sobriety he had lost his good humor, and had the irritability andintolerance of virtuous restraint.

  "Ye needn't ladle out any of your forty-rod whiskey to me," he saidquerulously to Steptoe, as he filed out with the rest of the partythrough the bar-room into the adjacent apartment. "I want to keep myhead level till our business is over, and I reckon it wouldn't hurt youand your gang to do the same. They're less likely to blab; and there arefew doors that whiskey won't unlock," he added, as Steptoe turned thekey in the door after the party had entered.

  The room had evidently been used for meetings of directors or politicalcaucuses, and was roughly furnished with notched and whittled armchairsand a single long deal table, on which were ink and pens. The men satdown around it with a half-embarrassed, half-contemptuous attitude offormality, their bent brows and isolated looks showing little communityof sentiment and scarcely an attempt to veil that individual selfishnessthat was prominent. Still less was there any essay of companionship orsympathy in the manner of Steptoe as he suddenly rapped on the tablewith his knuckles.

  "Gentlemen," he said, with a certain deliberation of utterance, as ifhe enjoyed his own coarse directness, "I reckon you all have a sort ofgeneral idea what you were picked up for, or you wouldn't be here.But you may or may not know that for the present you are honest,hard-working miners,--the backbone of the State of Californy,--and thatyou have formed yourselves into a company called the 'Blue Jay,'and you've settled yourselves on the Bar below Heavy Tree Hill, on adeserted claim of the Marshall Brothers, not half a mile from wherethe big strike was made five years ago. That's what you ARE, gentlemen;that's what you'll continue TO BE until the job's finished; and," headded, with a sudden dominance that they all felt, "the man who forgetsit will have to reckon with me. Now," he continued, resuming hisformer ironical manner, "now, what are the cold facts of the case? TheMarshalls worked this claim ever since '49, and never got anything outof it; then they dropped off or died out, leaving only one brother, TomMarshall, to work what was left of it. Well, a few days ago HE foundindications of a big lead in the rock, and instead of rushin' out andyellin' like an honest man, and callin' in the boys to drink, he sneaksoff to 'Frisco, and goes to the bank to get 'em to take a hand in it.Well, you know, when Jim Stacy takes a hand in anything, IT'S BOTHHANDS, and the bank wouldn't see it until he promised to guaranteepossession of the whole abandoned claim,--'dips, spurs, andangles,'--and let them work the whole thing, which the d----d fool DID,and the bank agreed to send an expert down there to-morrow to report.But while he was away some one on our side, who was an expert also, gotwind of it, and made an examination all by himself, and found it was avein sure enough and a big thing, and some one else on our side foundout, too, all that Marshall had promised the bank and what the bankhad promised him. Now, gentlemen, when the bank sends down that expertto-morrow I expect that he will find YOU IN POSSESSION of every part ofthe deserted claim except the spot where Tom is still working."

  "And what good is that to us?" asked one of the men contemptuously.

  "Good?" repeated Steptoe harshly. "Well, if you're not as d----d a foolas Marshall, you'll see that if he has struck a lead or vein it's boundto run across OUR CLAIMS, and what's to keep us from sinking for it aslong as Marshall hasn't worked the other claims for years nor pre-emptedthem for this lead?"

  "What'll keep him from preempting now?"

  "Our possession."

  "But if he can prove that the brothers left their claims to him to keep,he'll just send the sheriff and his posse down upon us," persisted thefirst speaker.

  "It will take him three months to do that by law, and the sheriff andhis posse can't do it before as long as we're in peaceable possession ofit. And by the time that expert and Marshall return they'll find us inpeaceful possession, unless we're such blasted fools as to stay talkingabout it here!"

  "But what's to prevent Marshall from getting a gang of his own to driveus off?"

  "Now your talkin' and not yelpin'," said Steptoe, with slow insolence."D----d if I didn't begin to think you kalkilated I was goin' to employyou as lawyers! Nothing is to prevent him from gettin' up HIS gang,and we hope he'll do it, for you see it puts us both on the same levelbefore the law, for we're both BREAKIN' IT. And we kalkilate that we'reas good as any roughs they can pick up at Heavy Tree."

  "I reckon!" "Ye can count us in!" said half a dozen voices eagerly.

  "But what's the job goin' to pay us?" persisted a Sydney man. "An' arterwe've beat off this other gang, are we going to scrub along on grubwages until we're yanked out by process-sarvers three months later? Ifthat's the ticket I'm not in it. I aren't no b--y quartz miner."

  "We ain't going to do no more MINING there than the bank," said Steptoefiercely. "And the bank ain't going to wait no three months for the endof the lawsuit. They'll float the stock of that mine for a couple ofmillions, and get out of it with a million before a month. And they'llhave to buy us off to do that. What they'll pay will depend upon thelead; but we don't move off those claims for less than five thousanddollars, which will be two hundred and fifty dollars to each man. But,"said Steptoe in a lower but perfectly distinct voice, "if there shouldbe a row,--and they BEGIN it,--and in the scuffle Tom Marshall, theironly witness, should happen to get in the way of a revolver or have hishead caved in, there might be some difficulty in their holdin' ANY OFTHE MINE against honest, hardworking miners in possession. You hear me?"

  There was a breathless silence for the moment, and a slight movementof the men in their chairs, but never in fear or protest. Every one hadheard the speaker distinctly, and every man distinctly understood him.Some of them were criminals, one or two had already the stain of bloodon their hands; but even the most timid, who at other times might haveshrunk from suggested assassination, saw in the speaker's words only thefair removal of a natural enemy.

  "All right, boys. I'm ready to wade in at once. Why ain't we on the roadnow? We might have been but for foolin' our time away on that man VanLoo."

  "Van Loo!" repeated Hall eagerly,--"Van Loo! Was he here?"

  "Yes," said Steptoe shortly, administering a kick under the table toHall, as he had no wish to revive the previous irritability of hiscomrades. "He's gone, but," turning to the others, "you'd have had towait for Mr. Hall's arrival, anyhow. And now you've got your order youcan start. Go in two parties by different roads, and meet on the otherside of the hotel at Hymettus. I'll be there before you. Pick up someshovels and drills as you go; remember you're honest miners, but don'tforget your shootin'-irons for all that. Now scatter."

  It was well
that they did, vacating the room more cheerfully andsympathetically than they had entered it, or Hall's manifest disturbanceover Van Loo's visit would have been noticed. When the last man haddisappeared Hall turned quickly to Steptoe. "Well, what did he say?Where has he gone?"

  "Don't know," said Steptoe, with uneasy curtness. "He was running awaywith a woman--well, Mrs. Barker, if you want to know," he added, withrising anger, "the wife of one of those cursed partners. Jack Hamlin washere, and was jockeying to stop him, and interfered. But what the devilhas that job to do with our job?" He was losing his temper; everythingseemed to turn upon this infernal Van Loo!

  "He wasn't running away with Mrs. Barker," gasped Hall,--"it was withher MONEY! and the fear of being connected with the Wheat Trust swindlewhich he organized, and with our money which I lent him for the samepurpose. And he knows all about that job, for I wanted to get him to gointo it with us. Your name and mine ain't any too sweet-smelling forthe bank, and we ought to have a middleman who knows business to arrangewith them. The bank daren't object to him, for they've employed him ineven shadier transactions than this when THEY didn't wish to appear. Iknew he was in difficulties along with Mrs. Barker's speculations, butI never thought him up to this. And," he added, with sudden desperation,"YOU trusted him, too."

  In an instant Steptoe caught the frightened man by the shoulders and wasbearing him down on the table. "Are you a traitor, a liar, or a besottedfool?" he said hoarsely. "Speak. WHEN and WHERE did I trust him?"

  "You said in your note--I was--to--help him," gasped Hall.

  "My note," repeated Steptoe, releasing Hall with astonished eyes.

  "Yes," said Hall, tremblingly searching in his vest pocket. "I broughtit with me. It isn't much of a note, but there's your signature plainenough."

  He handed Steptoe a torn piece of paper folded in a three-corneredshape. Steptoe opened it. He instantly recognized the paper on whichhe had written his name and sent up to his wife at the Boomville Hotel.But, added to it, in apparently the same hand, in smaller characters,were the words, "Help Van Loo all you can."

  The blood rushed into his face. But he quickly collected himself, andsaid hurriedly, "All right, I had forgotten it. Let the d----d sneak go.We've got what's a thousand times better in this claim at Marshall's,and it's well that he isn't in it to scoop the lion's share. Only wemust not waste time getting there now. You go there first, and at once,and set those rascals to work. I'll follow you before Marshall comes up.Get; I'll settle up here."

  His face darkened once more as Hall hurried away, leaving him alone. Hedrew out the piece of paper from his pocket and stared at it again. Yes;it was the one he had sent to his wife. How did Van Loo get hold ofit? Was he at the hotel that night? Had he picked it up in the hall orpassage when the servant dropped it? When Hall handed him the paper andhe first recognized it a fiendish thought, followed by a spasm of morefiendish rage, had sent the blood to his face. But his crude commonsense quickly dismissed that suggestion of his wife's complicity withVan Loo. But had she seen him passing through the hotel that night, andhad sought to draw from him some knowledge of his early intercourse withthe child, and confessed everything, and even produced the paper withhis signature as a proof of identity? Women had been known to do suchdesperate things. Perhaps she disbelieved her son's aversion to her, andwas trying to sound Van Loo. As for the forged words by Van Loo, and theuse he had put them to, he cared little. He believed the man was capableof forgery; indeed, he suddenly remembered that in the old days hisson had spoken innocently, but admiringly, of Van Loo's wonderfulchirographical powers and his faculty of imitating the writings ofothers, and how he had even offered to teach him. A new and exasperatingthought came into his feverish consciousness. What if Van Loo, inteaching the boy, had even made use of him as an innocent accomplice tocover up his own tricks! The suggestion was no question of moral ethicsto Steptoe, nor of his son's possible contamination, although since thenight of the big strike he had held different views; it was simply afierce, selfish jealousy that ANOTHER might have profited by the lad'shelplessness and inexperience. He had been tormented by this jealousybefore in his son's liking for Van Loo. He had at first encouraged hisadmiration and imitative regard for this smooth swindler's graces andaccomplishments, which, though he scorned them himself, he was, afterthe common parental infatuation, willing that the boy should profit by.Incapable, through his own consciousness, of distinguishing between VanLoo's superficial polish and the true breeding of a gentleman, hehad only looked upon it as an equipment for his son which might beserviceable to himself. He had told his wife the truth when he informedher of Van Loo's fears of being reminded of their former intimacy; buthe had not told her how its discontinuance after they had left HeavyTree Hill had affected her son, and how he still cherished his oldadmiration for that specious rascal. Nor had he told her how this hadstung him, through his own selfish greed of the boy's affection. Yet nowthat it was possible that she had met Van Loo that evening, she mighthave become aware of Van Loo's power over her child. How she wouldexult, for all her pretended hatred of Van Loo! How, perhaps, they hadplotted together! How Van Loo might have become aware of the place wherehis son was kept, and have been bribed by the mother to tell her! Hestopped in a whirl of giddy fancies. His strong common sense in allother things had been hitherto proof against such idle dreams orsuggestions; but the very strength of his parental love and jealousy hadawakened in him at last the terrors of imagination.

  His first impulse had been to seek his wife, regardless of discovery orconsequences, at Hymettus, where she had said she was going. It was onhis way to the rendezvous at Marshall's claim. But this he as instantlyset aside, it was his SON he must find; SHE might not confess, or mightdeceive him--the boy would not; and if his fears were correct, she couldbe arraigned afterwards. It was possible for him to reach the littleMission church and school, secluded in a remote valley by the oldFranciscan fathers, where he had placed the boy for the last few yearsunknown to his wife. It would be a long ride, but he could still reachHeavy Tree Hill afterwards before Marshall and the expert arrived. Andhe had a feeling he had never felt before on the eve of a desperateadventure,--that he must see the boy first. He remembered how the childhad often accompanied him in his flight, and how he had gained strength,and, it seemed to him, a kind of luck, from the touch of that small handin his. Surely it was necessary now that at least his mind should be atrest regarding HIM on the eve of an affair of this moment. Perhaps hemight never see him again. At any other time, and under the influence ofany other emotion, he would have scorned such a sentimentalism--he whohad never troubled himself either with preparation for the future orconsideration for the past. But at that moment he felt both. He drewa long breath. He could catch the next train to the Three Boulders andride thence to San Felipe. He hurriedly left the room, settled with thelandlord, and galloped to the station. By the irony of circumstances theonly horse available for that purpose was Mr. Hamlin's own.

  By two o'clock he was at the Three Boulders, where he got a fast horseand galloped into San Felipe by four. As he descended the last slopethrough the fastnesses of pines towards the little valley overlookedin its remoteness and purely pastoral simplicity by the gold-seekingimmigrants,--its seclusion as one of the furthest northern Californianmissions still preserved through its insignificance and the efforts ofthe remaining Brotherhood, who used it as an infirmary and a school forthe few remaining Spanish families,--he remembered how he once blunderedupon it with the boy while hotly pursued by a hue and cry from one ofthe larger towns, and how he found sanctuary there. He remembered how,when the pursuit was over, he had placed the boy there under the padre'scharge. He had lied to his wife regarding the whereabouts of her son,but he had spoken truly regarding his free expenditure for the boy'smaintenance, and the good fathers had accepted, equally for the child'ssake as for the Church's sake, the generous "restitution" which thiscoarse, powerful, ruffianly looking father was apparently seeking tomake. He was quite aware of it at the time, and had equ
ally accepted itwith grim cynicism; but it now came back to him with a new and smartingsignificance. Might THEY, too, not succeed in weaning the boy'saffection from him, or if the mother had interfered, would they not sidewith her in claiming an equal right? He had sometimes laughed to himselfover the security of this hiding-place, so unknown and so unlikely to bediscovered by her, yet within easy reach of her friends and his enemies;he now ground his teeth over the mistake which his doting desire to keephis son accessible to him had caused him to make. He put spurs to hishorse, dashed down the little, narrow, ill-paved street, throughthe deserted plaza, and pulled up in a cloud of dust before the onlyremaining tower, with its cracked belfry, of the half-ruined Missionchurch. A new dormitory and school-building had been extended from itswalls, but in a subdued, harmonious, modest way, quite unlike the usualglaring white-pine glories of provincial towns. Steptoe laughed tohimself bitterly. Some of his money had gone in it.

  He seized the horsehair rope dangling from a bell by the wall and rangit sharply. A soft-footed priest appeared,--Father Dominico. "EddyHorncastle? Ah! yes. Eddy, dear child, is gone."

  "Gone!" shouted Steptoe in a voice that startled the padre. "Where?When? With whom?"

  "Pardon, senor, but for a time--only a pasear to the next village. It ishis saint's day--he has half-holiday. He is a good boy. It is a littlepleasure for him and for us."

  "Oh!" said Steptoe, softened into a rough apology. "I forgot. All right.Has he had any visitors lately--lady, for instance?"

  Father Dominico cast a look half of fright, half of reproval upon hisguest.

  "A lady HERE!"

  In his relief Steptoe burst into a coarse laugh. "Of course; you seeI forgot that, too. I was thinking of one of his woman folks, youknow--relatives--aunts. Was there any other visitor?"

  "Only one. Ah! we know the senor's rules regarding his son."

  "One?" repeated Steptoe. "Who was it?"

  "Oh, quite an hidalgo--an old friend of the child's--most polite,most accomplished, fluent in Spanish, perfect in deportment. The SenorHorncastle surely could find nothing to object to. Father Pedro wascharmed with him. A man of affairs, and yet a good Catholic, too. Itwas a Senor Van Loo--Don Paul the boy called him, and they talked of theboy's studies in the old days as if--indeed, but for the stranger beinga caballero and man of the world--as if he had been his teacher."

  It was a proof of the intensity of the father's feelings that they hadpassed beyond the power of his usual coarse, brutal expression, and heonly stared at the priest with a dull red face in which the blood seemedto have stagnated. Presently he said thickly, "When did he come?"

  "A few days ago."

  "Which way did Eddy go?"

  "To Brown's Mills, scarcely a league away. He will be here--even now--onthe instant. But the senor will come into the refectory and take someof the old Mission wine from the Catalan grape, planted one hundred andfifty years ago, until the dear child returns. He will be so happy."

  "No! I'm in a hurry. I will go on and meet him." He took off his hat,mopped his crisp, wet hair with his handkerchief, and in a thick, slow,impeded voice, more suggestive than the outburst he restrained, said,"And as long as my son remains here that man, Van Loo, must not passthis gate, speak to him, or even see him. You hear me? See to it, youand all the others. See to it, I say, or"--He stopped abruptly, clappedhis hat on the swollen veins of his forehead, turned quickly, passed outwithout another word through the archway into the road, and before thegood priest could cross himself or recover from his astonishment thethud of his horse's hoofs came from the dusty road.

  It was ten minutes before his face resumed its usual color. But in thatten minutes, as if some of the struggle of his rider had passed intohim, his horse was sweating with exhaustion and fear. For in that tenminutes, in this new imagination with which he was cursed, he had killedboth Van Loo and his son, and burned the refectory over the heads of thetreacherous priests. Then, quite himself again, a voice came to him fromthe rocky trail above the road with the hail of "Father!" He startedquickly as a lad of fifteen or sixteen came bounding down the hillside,and ran towards him.

  "You passed me and I called to you, but you did not seem to hear,"said the boy breathlessly. "Then I ran after you. Have you been to theMission?"

  Steptoe looked at him quite as breathlessly, but from a deeper emotion.He was, even at first sight, a handsome lad, glowing with youth and theexcitement of his run, and, as the father looked at him, he couldsee the likeness to his mother in his clear-cut features, and even aresemblance to himself in his square, compact chest and shoulders andcrisp, black curls. A thrill of purely animal paternity passed over him,the fierce joy of his flesh over his own flesh! His own son, by God!They could not take THAT from him; they might plot, swindle, fawn,cheat, lie, and steal away his affections, but there he was, plain toall eyes, his own son, his very son!

  "Come here," he said in a singular, half-weary and half-protestingvoice, which the boy instantly recognized as his father's accents ofaffection.

  The boy hesitated as he stood on the edge of the road and pointed withmingled mischief and fastidiousness to the depths of impalpable reddust that lay between him and the horseman. Steptoe saw that he was verysmartly attired in holiday guise, with white duck trousers and patentleather shoes, and, after the Spanish fashion, wore black kid gloves. Hecertainly was a bit of a dandy, as he had said. The father's whole facechanged as he wheeled and came before the lad, who lifted up his armsexpectantly. They had often ridden together on the same horse.

  "No rides to-day in that toggery, Eddy," he said in the same voice. "ButI'll get down and we'll go and sit somewhere under a tree and have sometalk. I've got a bit of a job that's hurrying me, and I can't wastetime."

  "Not one of your old jobs, father? I thought you had quite given thatup?"

  The boy spoke more carelessly than reproachfully, or even wonderingly;yet, as he dismounted and tethered his horse, Steptoe answeredevasively, "It's a big thing, sonny; maybe we'll make our eternalfortune, and then we'll light out from this hole and have a gay timeelsewhere. Come along."

  He took the boy's gloved right hand in his own powerful grasp, andtogether they clambered up the steep hillside to a rocky ledge on whicha fallen pine from above had crashed, snapped itself in twain, and thenleft its withered crown to hang half down the slope, while the otherhalf rested on the ledge. On this they sat, looking down upon the roadand the tethered horse. A gentle breeze moved the treetops above theirheads, and the westering sun played hide-and-seek with the shiftingshadows. The boy's face was quick and alert with all that moved roundhim, but without thought the father's face was heavy, except for theeyes that were fixed upon his son.

  "Van Loo came to the Mission," he said suddenly.

  The boy's eyes glittered quickly, like a steel that pierced the father'sheart. "Oh," he said simply, "then it was the padre told you?"

  "How did he know you were here?" asked Steptoe.

  "I don't know," said the boy quietly. "I think he said something, butI've forgotten it. But it was mighty good of him to come, for I thought,you know, that he did not care to see me after Heavy Tree, and that he'dgone back on us."

  "What did he tell you?" continued Steptoe. "Did he talk of me or of yourmother?"

  "No," said the boy, but without any show of interest or sympathy; "wetalked mostly about old times."

  "Tell ME about those old times, Eddy. You never told me anything aboutthem."

  The boy, momentarily arrested more by something in the tone of hisfather's voice--a weakness he had never noticed before--than by anysuggestion of his words, said with a laugh, "Oh, only about what weused to do when I was very little and used to call myself his 'littlebrother,'--don't you remember, long before the big strike on Heavy Tree?They were gay times we had then."

  "And how he used to teach you to imitate other people's handwriting?"said Steptoe.

  "What made you think of that, pop?" said the boy, with a slight wonderin his eyes. "Why, that's the very thing w
e DID talk about."

  "But you didn't do it again; you ain't done it since," said Steptoequickly.

  "Lord! no," said the boy contemptuously. "There ain't no chance now, andthere wouldn't be any fun in it. It isn't like the old times when himand me were all alone, and we used to write letters as coming from otherpeople to all the boys round Heavy Tree and the Bar, and sometimes asfar as Boomville, to get them to do things, and they'd think the letterswere real, and they'd do 'em. And there'd be the biggest kind of a row,and nobody ever knew who did it."

  Steptoe stared at this flesh of his own flesh half in relief, half infrightened admiration. Sitting astride the log, his elbows on his kneesand his gloved hands supporting his round cheeks, the boy's handsomeface became illuminated with an impish devilry which the father hadnever seen before. With dancing eyes he went on. "It was one of thosevery games we played so long ago that he wanted to see me about andwanted me to keep mum about, for some of the folks that he played it onwere around here now. It was a game we got off on one of the big strikepartners long before the strike. I'll tell YOU, dad, for you knowwhat happened afterwards, and you'll be glad. Well, thatpartner--Demorest--was a kind of silly, you remember--a sort of MissNancyish fellow--always gloomy and lovesick after his girl in theStates. Well, we'd written lots of letters to girls from their chapsbefore, and got lots of fun out of it; but we had even a better showfor a game here, for it happened that Van Loo knew all about thegirl--things that even the man's own partners didn't, for Van Loo'smother was a sort of a friend of the girl's family, and traveled aboutwith her, and knew that the girl was spoony over this Demorest, and thatthey corresponded. So, knowing that Van Loo was employed at Heavy Tree,she wrote to him to find out all about Demorest and how to stop theirfoolish nonsense, for the girl's parents didn't want her to marry abroken-down miner like him. So we thought we'd do it our own way, andwrite a letter to her as if it was from him, don't you see? I wanted tomake him call her awful names, and say that he hated her, that he was amurderer and a horse-thief, and that he had killed a policeman, and thathe was thinking of becoming a Digger Injin, and having a Digger squawfor a wife, which he liked better than her. Lord! dad, you ought to haveseen what stuff I made up." The boy burst into a shrill, half-femininelaugh, and Steptoe, catching the infection, laughed loudly in his owncoarse, brutal fashion.

  For some moments they sat there looking in each other's faces, shakingwith sympathetic emotion, the father forgetting the purpose of hiscoming there, his rage over Van Loo's visit, and even the rendezvousto which his horse in the road below was waiting to bring him; the sonforgetting their retreat from Heavy Tree Hill and his shameful vagabondwanderings with that father in the years that followed. The sinking sunstared blankly in their faces; the protecting pines above them moved bya stronger gust shook a few cones upon them; an enormous crow mockinglyrepeated the father's coarse laugh, and a squirrel scampered away fromthe strangely assorted pair as Steptoe, wiping his eyes and foreheadwith his pocket-handkerchief, said:--

  "And did you send it?"

  "Oh! Van Loo thought it too strong. Said that those sort of love-sickfools made more fuss over little things than they did over big things,and he sort of toned it down, and fixed it up himself. But it told. Forthere were never any more letters in the post-office in her handwriting,and there wasn't any posted to her in his."

  They both laughed again, and then Steptoe rose. "I must be gettingalong," he said, looking curiously at the boy. "I've got to catch atrain at Three Boulders Station."

  "Three Boulders!" repeated the boy. "I'm going there, too, on Friday, tomeet Father Cipriano."

  "I reckon my work will be all done by Friday," said Steptoe musingly.Standing thus, holding his boy's hand, he was thinking that the realfight at Marshall's would not take place at once, for it might take aday or two for Marshall to gather forces. But he only pressed his son'shand gently.

  "I wish you would sometimes take me with you as you used to," said theboy curiously. "I'm bigger now, and wouldn't be in your way."

  Steptoe looked at the boy with a choking sense of satisfaction andpride. But he said, "No;" and then suddenly with simulated humor, "Don'tyou be taken in by any letters from ME, such as you and Van Loo used towrite. You hear?"

  The boy laughed.

  "And," continued Steptoe, "if anybody says I sent for you, don't youbelieve them."

  "No," said the boy, smiling.

  "And don't you even believe I'm dead till you see me so. You understand.By the way, Father Pedro has some money of mine kept for you. Now hurryback to school and say you met me, but that I was in a great hurry. Ireckon I may have been rather rough to the priests."

  They had reached the lower road again, and Steptoe silently unhitchedhis horse. "Good-by," he said, as he laid his hand on the boy's arm.

  "Good-by, dad."

  He mounted his horse slowly. "Well," he said smilingly, looking down theroad, "you ain't got anything more to say to me, have you?"

  "No, dad."

  "Nothin' you want?"

  "Nothin', dad."

  "All right. Good-by."

  He put spurs to his horse and cantered down the road without lookingback. The boy watched him with idle curiosity until he disappeared fromsight, and then went on his way, whistling and striking off the heads ofthe wayside weeds with his walking-stick.