Part 42 (1/2)

”Why do you torture me?”

”Prefer a meat-ball?”

”Go on, sir.”

”I might be induced to hide away these delicacies. Also this”--I kicked the dog's carca.s.s--”in fact to help you some. You could bury the past, and resign yo' post as cook.”

”The news will come out, and I'll be murdered anyway. What's the good?”

”There being no ransom,” says I, ”the use for you here ain't much conspicuous. As a cook you're precarious, too. Suppose I get you turned loose?”

”I'll pay one hundred thousand dollars the day you set me free in the nearest town.”

How could I tell the poor brute that he had not a dollar left in the whole world?

”Two hundred thousand,” says he, ”and that's my last word.”

A man came to the door behind me, which opened on the yard. There hung a long iron crowbar, bent up in the form of a triangle. The man began to beat this with a horseshoe, and the sound would carry maybe a quarter-mile.

”Name your own terms,” says Ryan. ”Come, name your price!”

”You does me too much honour,” says I, for how could I tell him the facts?

”What do I care for your honour?” Ryan had played like a sneaking coyote before, but now he talked out like a man. ”I've bought better men than you with a hundred dollars, and now I'm going to insult you with hard cash. Your price, you thief!”

The sound of the gong must have been a gathering signal, for men were straying in from the corrals, and there was soon a tramping of feet and buff of talk from the messroom at my back.

”D'ye think,” says Ryan, ”that I'd be under any obligations to such as you? I ask no favours. I only try to make it worth your while to do what's right for once. Come, have you any manhood in you? I appeal to your manhood to save me. Oh, turn your back, you hound!”

I ran to my saddle in the yard, opened my warbags, grabbed out a pad of paper and fountain-pen, then pushed my way through the growing crowd about the messroom doors, until I won back to the kitchen.

”Ryan,” says I, ”set down on that meat block, and write down what I say in yo' own words.”

”What new treachery is this?” he asked.

”If you want to live,” I answered, ”you'd best get a move on, and write.”

The row in the messroom made it hard for him to hear, so I drew up close.

”Memorandum,” says I, and he began to scribble; ”date it 'Robbers'

Roost, Utah.'”

”But this is California!”

”Write what I say, 'October 13th, 1900.'”

Michael Ryan confessed on oath how he had aided and abetted George Ryan in a plot to destroy Balshannon. He confessed to perjury at the Ryan inquest, naming the witnesses and the amounts he paid to each. He released the Holy Cross estate from all claims on the ground of debt, restoring the same to Jim. He swore that Jim, Curly, and I were not among the brigands who captured him, and he believed all three of us to be innocent.

As to these facts, I had to convince him with a meat ball, but in the end he signed.

Then I got in a brace of independent robbers to sign as witnesses, so the thing looked mighty legal and satisfying. Meanwhile in the messroom I could hear McCalmont calling his wolves to order, and my witnesses went away to hear his talk.