CHAPTER VI

A Bird to Pluck

As he walked down Main Street toward the Kenora Hotel, where it was his intention to have a bite to eat, Phil congratulated himself inwardly, on the one side, on the more than ordinary success of his gigantic bluff--for he knew that so long as he was able to hold this bogey of a confession as a club over the head of Brenchfield, he was safe from open interference:--on the other side, he cursed his arrant stupidity and childlike simplicity in destroying a doc.u.ment which, even if he never used it, proved beyond the shadow of a doubt his innocence of the crime for which he had been imprisoned.

He tried hard to recollect exactly what had happened that fatal morning after Brenchfield had left the shack on the side of the road at Carnaby, but all was more or less hazy and indistinct. He remembered deciphering the note and crumpling it up in his despair and worry. Later, he recollected gathering up the loose papers and other material evidences of Brenchfield's guilt, stuffing them into the stove and setting them alight.

As he walked along his musings were brought to an abrupt stop, as his eye caught sight of a tall, straight, picturesque-looking individual coming toward him. The man was dressed in what at one time had been an immaculate sporting suit, but which, in its now battered and tattered state, gave the wearer the look of a bookmaker who had been dragged through a mud puddle and then hung out to dry.

The man's wide sombrero was battered, his stock around his neck was dirty, the bra.s.s b.u.t.tons on his robin-redbreast waistcoat were dull and tarnished, his riding breeches and leggings seemed sworn enemies of brush and polish. But despite all this, one could not get away from the fact that everything the man wore was of the very best and most expensive materials.

He stepped up in front of Phil apologetically. His voice was attractively musical and exceedingly English.

"Excuse me, old chap! I'm a stranger here. I'm deuced dirty and devilish hungry. Do you mind directing me to a good hotel where I could get a wash and a jolly good tuck in?"

"Certainly," said Phil. "I think the Kenora's all right. I'm going that way myself for a snack, if you care to come along."

"Thanks! Jolly decent! Don't mind if I do!"

He turned with Phil, and as they went on together he took a little silver case from his pocket and handed a card to Phil.

"My name! What's yours?"

Phil scanned the card and smiled.

Percival DeRue Hannington The Oaks Mount Raeburn Hants

"Sorry I haven't a card," he said. "My name's Ralston, Phil Ralston."

"Don't mention it, old chap! They don't cotton much to cards out here, I notice."

He wrung Phil's hand heartily.

A little cord was hanging round Percival Hannington's neck and led to a top pocket of his vest. Phil felt positive it terminated in a monocle and, as the stranger's fingers wandered down the cord, Phil, in his dread of what was about to happen, laid his hand restrainingly over the travelling fingers.

"Don't!" he pleaded. "They don't cotton to that, either, out here."

The stranger flushed a little.

"By jove,--you're right. Thanks! Habits are beastly things, you know.

Better rid myself of all my old ties if I'm to start afresh, eh!"

He pulled out the monocle, jerked the cord from his neck, snapped the gla.s.s between his fingers and tossed the lot into the roadway.

Something in the spontaneous act went to Phil's heart and he felt from that moment that here was a man he could like despite his strange exterior.

They pa.s.sed through the bar of the Kenora, which was the only way one could get admittance to that hotel unless by the back door among empty cans and kitchen garbage. The strange apparition of the Englishman reduced everyone in the saloon to funereal silence. Phil bravely led the way, however, without mishap, except for a distant shout of laughter which reached them at the dining-room.

Phil spoke to the hotel clerk, who shouted for the bell boy.

"Follow that boy," said Phil. "He will fix you up."

"Thanks! If you don't mind, I should like to have my bite with you, old chap. I won't be a jiffy."

And off he strutted after the grinning boy, while Phil sat in five minutes' dreamy contemplation.

Back came Percival DeRue Hannington, spick and span as far as a clothes-brush and soap and water could make him.

"By jove! It's a corker how much dirt can stick to a fellow without falling off," he remarked. "What are you having?"

Phil named something light.

"That all?" asked Hannington. "I'm hungry as a blooming hawk. I haven't had a decent bite for three months.

"Everything on the blessed calendar for me, miss, frills and extras included," he went on, addressing the waitress, who went away with the end of her ap.r.o.n in her mouth.

"You know, Mister--Mister----"

"Phil Ralston!"

"Ah, yes! Mister Phil----"

"Just plain Phil!"

"Phil--yes, excuse me! You know, I came out to this bally country on false pretences, as it were. Oh,--the country's all right! Don't misunderstand me. It's a regular ripper, but, damme, I got done, you know."

The soup came along, and DeRue Hannington fumbled for his monocle but suddenly seemed to remember that it was no longer a part of him. He blundered awkwardly a while, as if he had suddenly been deprived of one of his active members.

"It's this way, Mister, eh, Phil. The guv'nor thought I was going the pace too hard and becoming a bally rotter, so he said I had to go out West and be a rawncher. He said it just like that,--as if being a rawncher was as easy as being a rotter.

"Are you a rawncher?"

"No! It takes money to be that."

"You're a foreman, or a cowboy, or something?"

"No,--I'm not anything yet," smiled Phil. "I'm just starting in. I've lately finished my college training."

The irony in his voice was lost on DeRue Hannington who was too full of his own troubles to worry about those of anyone else.

"Well, you see,--when the dad and I had that tiff, I just took him on.

"I saw an advertis.e.m.e.nt of a rawnching chap in a London journal, offering to take on an Englishman as an apprentice and teach him everything about rawnching for three years for five hundred dollars a year. I just cabled that fellow and got his answer to come right away.

And here I got three months ago."

All the time he was speaking, Hannington was eating ravenously but with the ease and daintiness of one whose table manners were an eternal part of him.