"Gosh, I'm dry with argument" taunted Mr. Hennage. "Now that we understand each other, let's be friends. We _can_ be friends out o'

business hours, can't we, Carey? Come an' have a drink."

"With all my heart" Carey retorted, with genuine pleasure. "I must confess to a liking for you, Mr. Hennage. I could kill you and then weep at your funeral, for upon my word you are the most amusing and philosophical opponent I have ever met. I really have hopes that ultimately you will listen to reason."

"There is no hope" said Mr. Hennage, as he took T. Morgan Carey by the arm--almost, as Mrs. Dan Pennycook would have expressed it, "friendly like," and escorted him to the hotel bar. Here Mr. Hennage produced a thousand-dollar bill from his vest pocket (he had carried that bill for ten years and always used it as a flash during his peregrinations outside San Pasqual) and calmly laid it on the bar.

"Wine" he said. Mr. Hennage's order, when doing the handsome thing, was always "wine." The barkeeper set out a pint of champagne and filled both gla.s.ses. The gambler raised his to the light, eyed it critically and then flashed his three gold teeth at T. Morgan Carey.

"Here's d.a.m.nation to you, Mr. Carey" he said. "May you live unhappily and die in jail."

"The sentiment, my dear Hennage, is entirely reciprocal" Carey flashed back at him. They drank, gazing at each other over the rims of their gla.s.ses.

Despite the knock-out which Harley P. had given him, T. Morgan Carey was enjoying the gambler's society. Mr. Hennage was a new note in life.

Carey had never met his kind before, and he was irresistibly attracted toward the man from San Pasqual.

"Upon my word, Hennage" he said, as he set down his gla.s.s, "if your liquor could only be metamorphosed into prussic acid, I'd gladly shoulder your funeral expenses. You're a thorn in my side."

"We understand each other, Carey. Any time you're meditatin' suicide drop around to San Pasqual an' I'll buy you a pistol."

Carey laughed long and loud. "Hennage" he said, "do you know I think I should grow to like you? By George, I think I should. If you should ever come to Los Angeles, look me up," and he presented the gambler with his card.

Mr. Hennage smiled, tore the card into little bits and dropped them to the floor.

"Do I look like a tin-horn?" he queried.

A momentary frown crossed Carey's face; then he, too, smiled. He was finding it hard to take offense at the gambler's bluntness.

"I think you're a dead-game sport, Hennage" he said, and there was no doubt that he meant it. "But I shall not despair. You have brains. Some day, I feel a.s.sured, we shall sit down together like sensible men and do business."

"And in the meantime" replied Mr. Hennage, raising an admonitory forefinger, "our motto is 'Keep off the gra.s.s.'"

"Oh, I won't walk on your darned old gra.s.s" Carey retorted. "I'll just step between it."

They shook hands in friendly fashion, and Carey hurried away. Mr.

Hennage stared after him.

"Sa.s.sy as a badger" he murmured. "I can't bluff that _hombre._ He'll go as far as he can, an' be ready to jump in the first chance he sees. Bob, my boy, you're up against it."

Mr. Hennage's business in Bakersfield was now completed. He felt certain that a battle between Bob McGraw and T. Morgan Carey was inevitable, should Bob decide to remain in the background and send an ally out to fight for him. However, despite his horror of Bob's crime, the gambler unconsciously extended him his sympathy, and if there was to be a battle, either its commencement had been delayed or its duration prolonged by the little bluff which he had just worked on T. Morgan Carey, and that was all Mr. Hennage was striving for.

"I must find Bob" mused the gambler, "an' I must have time to find him before these people euchre him out o' that valuable water right o' his.

An' when I find that young man, I'll bet six-bits he sells that water right to me; then I'll sell it to my friend Carey an' the proceeds o'

that sale 'll go to Donnie. A woman can get along without a man, if she's got the price to get along on."

The gambler's line of reasoning was a wise one. In the chain of powerful circ.u.mstantial evidence that linked Donna Corblay to Bob McGraw, Mr.

Hennage was the most powerful link, and if he was to remove himself beyond the jurisdiction of a subpoena from the Superior Court of Kern county, and thus evade answering embarra.s.sing questions when Bob should be brought to trial (as the gambler felt certain he would be), it behooved Mr. Hennage to travel far and fast.

He went down to the station and purchased a ticket for Goldfield, Nevada. Goldfield was in the zenith of her glory about that time and Harley P. felt certain of a plethora of easy money in any booming mining camp. Indeed, it behooved him to seek pastures where the gra.s.s was long and green, for in the removal from Donna's heart of what he termed "the big sting," Harley P. planned to play havoc with his bank-roll.

He proceeded about this delicate task as befits one who has a horror of appearing presumptuous. A week after his arrival in Goldfield he rented a typewriter for a day, took it to his room in the Goldfield hotel and battled manfully with it for several hours. After much toil he evolved the following form letter:

_Dear Friend:_

A short time ago I robbed the San Pasqual stage at Garlock. I took ------ dollars of your money, which I return to you now; with many thanks, for the reason that I don't need it no more and am sorry I took it.

I notice by the papers that they found my hat with my name in it, which serves me right. I did not have no business doing that job in the first place. It was my first and it will be my last. I am going to start fresh again and hope you won't bear me no grudge for what I done.

Trusting that the same has not caused you any inconvenience, and with best wishes I am

Respectfully,

ROBERT MCGRAW.

In the blank s.p.a.ce left for the purpose Mr. Hennage inserted in lead-pencil the figures representing the exact amount of coin which he had been informed by the express agent had been taken from each pa.s.senger. Next he inserted the exact amount in paper money, together with his letters, in envelopes which he also addressed on the typewriter, stamped them and walked down to the post-office.

"Now, that fixes everything up lovely" he soliloquized, as he watched the envelopes disappear down the main chute. "Wells Fargo & Co. get theirs back, so they'll pull off their detective force an' withdraw the reward; every pa.s.senger gets his back, an' if he's called to testify it's a cinch he'll ask the judge to be merciful on the defendant, because he made rest.i.tution an' showed sorrer for what he went an' done.

Everybody gets fixed up except T. Morgan Carey, an' I work too dog-gone hard for my money to throw it away on _him._ When folks find Bob has sent back the money he stole he won't be anything like the evil cuss he is now an' the whole thing 'll simmer down to a big joke. When that poor broken-hearted little wife o' his hears about it she'll think it ain't so bad after all. She'll figure that they can go somewhere else an' live it down an' that'll ease the ache a heap. Suppose she does meet some o'

them San Pasqual cattle in the years to come? What's the odds? n.o.body in San Pasqual knows him or ever seen him, 'ceptin' Doc Taylor--an' what's in a name? Nothin'. There's hundreds o' McGraws in California right now, an' more arrivin' on every train."

Thus reasoned the artful Harley P. When his task was completed he stood outside the door of the post-office whimsically surveying the ruin of his fortune. Less than two thousand dollars was all he had to show for a life-time of endeavor, and one thousand of that was contained in a single bill and was Mr. Hennage's pocket-piece. He must never change that bill. It was his little nest-egg against a rainy day, and hereafter he would have to carry it where it could not readily be reached when under the spell of sudden temptation.

He returned to his room, wrapped the bill into a compact little wad and tucked it far into the toe of one of his congress gaiters.

"It's a blessin'" he muttered plaintively, as he replaced his shoe, "that the lives us gamblers leads generally tends to choke off our wind around the fifty-mark at the latest. I'm forty-five an' here in the mere shank o' old age, after runnin' my own game for twenty years, I got to go to work for somebody else."

CHAPTER XVII

It is one of the compensating laws of existence that the crisis of human despair and grief is reached on the instant that the reason for it becomes apparent; thereafter it occupies itself for a season in the gradual process of wearing itself out. Time is the great healer of human woe, and if in the darkness of despair one tiny ray of hope can filter through, an automatic rebound to the normal conditions of life quickly follows. The death of a loved one would not be endurable, were it not that Hope dares to reach beyond the grave.

For three days following her discovery of Bob McGraw's name written beneath the sweat-band of the outlaw's hat, Donna Corblay lay on her bed at the Hat Ranch, battling with herself in an effort to refrain from thinking the terrible thoughts that persisted in obtruding themselves upon her tortured brain. For three days, and the greater portion of two nights, she had cried aloud to the four dumb walls of the Hat Ranch:

"He didn't do it. He couldn't do it. My Bob couldn't do such a thing.

It's some terrible mistake. Oh, my husband! My dear, thoughtless, impulsive husband! Oh, Bob! Bob! Come back and face them and tell them you didn't do it. Only tell me, and I'll believe you and stick by you through everything."

And then the horrible thought that he was guilty; that even now he was being hunted, hatless, hungry, weary and thirsty--a pariah with every honest man's hand raised against him--reminded her that the limit of her wretchedness lay, not in the fact that her faith in him had been shattered, but in the more appalling consciousness that he would not come back to her! Wild herald of woe and death, he had flitted into her life--as carelessly as he came he had departed, and she knew he would not come back.

Yes, Bob was too shrewd a man not to realize that in abandoning his hat he had left behind him the evidence that must send him to the penitentiary should he ever return to his old haunts in Inyo and Mono counties. He loved his liberty too well to sacrifice it, and he knew her code. It did not seem possible to Donna that he would have the audacity to face her again; so, man-like, he would not try.

And then she would think of him as she had seen him that first night, leaning on Friar Tuck's neck and gazing at her in the dim ghostly light of a green switch-lantern--telling her with his eyes that he loved her.

She recalled his little mocking inscrutable smile, the manhood that had won her to him when first they met, and against all this she remembered that she had presented him with the hat which the express messenger had showed her--she had seen him write his name in indelible pencil under the leathern sweat-band!

She knew he had ridden north from San Pasqual the night before the hold-up--and thirty-five miles was as much as one small tough horse could do in the desert between the hour at which Bob had left her and his presumable arrival at Garlock, where he lay in wait for the stage.

The automatic gun, the hat, the khaki clothing, the blue bandanna handkerchief which the bandit had used for a mask, the fact that he was mounted--all had pointed to her husband as the bandit. But the description of the horse was at variance with the facts, and moreover--Donna thought of this on the third day--where had Bob gotten that rifle with which he killed the express messenger's horse?