Part 16 (2/2)

”You'll save my life if you do,” he added, crus.h.i.+ng a bank note into Jake's hand.

Jake looked at me. The same thought flashed on us both; if we could get this church student on our side--Well! Things would be easy enough and public suspicion never touch us. Jake turned, resurrected the hidden cups, and went down cellar.

”You're Dan McLeod, aren't you?” suggested Barrett, leaning across the table and looking sharply at me.

”That's me,” I said in turn, and sized him up. I didn't like his face; it was the undeniable face of a liar--small, uncertain eyes, set together close like those of a fox, a thin nose, a narrow, womanish chin that accorded with his girlish actions of coaxing, and a mouth I didn't quite understand.

Jake had come up with the bottle, but before he could put it on the table Barrett s.n.a.t.c.hed it like a starving dog would a hunk of meat.

He peered at the label, squinting his foxy eyes, then laughed up at Jake.

”I hope you don't sell the Indians _this_,” he said, tapping the capsule.

No, Jake never sold a drop of whiskey to Indians,--the law, you know, was very strict and--

”Oh, I don't care whatever else you sell them,” said Barrett, ”but their red throats would never appreciate fine twelve-year-old like this. Come, boys.”

We came.

”So you're Dan McLeod,” he continued after the first long pull, ”I've heard about you, too. You've got a deck of cards in your pocket--haven't you? Let's have a game.”

I looked at him, and though, as I said in the beginning, I'm not a good man, I felt honestly sorry for the old missionary and his wife at that moment.

”It's no use,” said the boy, reading my hesitation. ”I've broken loose. I must have a slice of the old college life, just for to-night.”

I decided the half-cut of Indian blood on his mother's side was showing itself; it was just enough to give Tom a good red flavoring and a rare taste for gaming and liquor.

We played until daylight, when Barrett said he must make his sneak home, and reaching for his wide-brimmed, soft felt preacher's hat, left--having pocketed twenty-six of our good dollars, swallowed unnumbered cups of twelve-year-old and won the combined respect of everyone at Jake's.

The next Sunday Jake went to church out of curiosity. He said Tom Barrett ”officiated” in a surplice as white as snow and with a face as sinless as your mother's. He preached most eloquently against the terrible evil of the illicit liquor trade, and implored his Indian flock to resist this greatest of all pitfalls. Jake even seemed impressed as he told us.

But Tom Barrett's ”breaking loose for once” was like any other man's. Night after night saw him at Jake's, though he never played to win after that first game. As the weeks went on, he got anxious-looking; his clerical coat began to grow seedy, his white ties uncared for; he lost his fresh, cheeky talk, and the climax came late in March when one night I found him at Jake's sitting alone, his face bowed down on the table above his folded arms, and something so disheartened in his att.i.tude that I felt sorry for the boy. Perhaps it was that I was in trouble myself that day; my biggest ”deal” of the season had been scented by the officers and the chances were they would come on and seize the five barrels of whiskey I had been as many weeks smuggling into the Reserve.

However it was, I put my hand on his shoulder, and told him to brace up, asking at the same time what was wrong.

”Money,” he answered, looking up with kind of haggard eyes. ”Dan, I must have money. City bills, college debts--everything has rolled up against me. I daren't tell the governor, and he couldn't help me anyway, and I can't go back for another term owing every man in my cla.s.s.” He looked suicidal. And then I made the plunge I'd been thinking on all day.

”Would a hundred dollars be any good to you?” I eyed him hard as I said it, and sat down in my usual place, opposite him.

”Good?” he exclaimed, half rising. ”It would be an eternal G.o.dsend.” His foxy eyes glittered. I thought I detected greed in them; perhaps it was only relief.

I told him it was his if he would only help me, and making sure we were quite alone, I ran off a hurried account of my ”deal,” then proposed that he should ”accidentally” meet the officers near the border, ring in with them as a parson would be likely to do, tell them he suspicioned the whiskey was directly at the opposite side of the Reserve to where I really had stored it, get them wild-goose chasing miles away, and give me a chance to clear the stuff and myself as well; in addition to the hundred I would give him twenty per cent. on the entire deal. He changed color and the sweat stood out on his forehead.

”One hundred dollars this time to-morrow night,” I said. He didn't move. ”And twenty per cent. One hundred dollars this time to-morrow night,” I repeated.

He began to weaken. I lit my pipe and looked indifferent, though I knew I was a lost man if he refused--and informed. Suddenly he stretched his hand across the table, impulsively, and closed it over mine. I knew I had him solid then.

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