Part 72 (2/2)
Evidently Tweezy knew the answer. With a yelp of ”Tried to cross me, you--!” he flung himself bodily upon Jack Harpe.
In a moment the two were rolling on the floor. It required four men and seven minutes to pry them apart.
CHAPTER x.x.xII
THE END OF THE TRAIL
Molly Dale looked at Racey with adoring eyes. ”How on earth did you guess that the Bill Smith who robbed the Wells Fargo safe at Keeleyville and killed the agent was Jack Harpe?”
”Oh, that was nothing. You see, I'd heard somebody say--I disremember exactly who now--that Jack Harpe's real name was Bill Smith, that he'd shaved off his beard and part of his eyebrows to make himself look different, and that he'd done something against the law to some company in some town. I didn't know what company nor what town, but I had somethin' to start with when McFluke was let loose. I figured out by this, that, and the other that Jack Harpe had let McFluke loose. Aw right, that showed Jack Harpe was a expert lock picker. He showed us at Marysville that he was a expert on safe combinations. Now there can't be many men like that. So I took what I knew about him to the detective chiefs of three railroads. He'd done somethin' against a company, do you see, and of course I went to three different _railroad_ companies before I woke up and went to the Wells Fargo an'
found out that such a man as Jack Harpe named Bill Smith was wanted for the Keeleyville job. So you see there wasn't much to it. It was all there waitin' for somebody to find it.”
”But it lacked the somebody till you came along,” she told him with s.h.i.+ning eyes.
”Shucks.”
”No shucks about it. That we have our ranch to-day with a sure-enough producing gold mine in one corner of it is all due to you.”
”Shucks, suppose now those handwritin' experts Judge Dolan got from Chicago hadn't been able to prove at the time that the forgery and the fifty or sixty copies of yore dad's name were written by the same hand, ink, and pen? Suppose now they hadn't? What then? Where'd you be, I'd like to know? Nawsir, you give them the credit. They deserve it. Well, I'm sh.o.r.e glad yo're all gonna be rich, Molly. It's fine.
That's what it is--fine--great. Well, I've got to be driftin' along.
I'm going to meet Swing in town. We're riding south Arizona way to-morrow.”
”Arizona!”
”Yeah, we're going to give the mining game a whirl.”
”Why--why not give it a whirl up here in this country?”
”Because there ain't another mine like yores in the territory. No, we'll go south. Swing wants to go--been wanting to go for some time.”
”Bub-but I thought you were going to stay up here,” persisted Molly, her cheeks a little white.
”Not--not now,” Racey said, hastily. ”So long, take care of yoreself.”
He reached for her hand, gave it a quick squeeze, then picked up his hat and walked out of the house without another word or a backward look.
”What makes me sick is not a cent out of Old Salt,” said Racey, wrathfully, as he and Swing Tunstall walked their horses south along the Marysville trail.
”What else could you expect?” said the philosopher Swing. ”We specified in the agreement that it was cows them jiggers was gonna run on the range. We didn't say nothin' about a mine.”
”'We?'” repeated Racey. ”'We?' You didn't have a thing to do with that agreement. I made it. It was my fool fault we worked all those months for nothing.”
”What's the dif?” Swing said, comfortably. ”We're partners. Deal yoreself a new hand and forget it. Tough luck we couldn't 'a' made a clean sweep of that bunch, huh?”
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