Part 27 (1/2)
”You'd better trust me,” rumbled Tip.
”Be reasonable, Tip. You ask for trust and you give me a stone.”
”A stone?”
”What else is three to five thousand bucks, I'd like to know. I'm no child, man. I've got my growth, and I've put away childish things, including all-day suckers.”
”You must take me for one.”
”Not you, not in a million years. But--” Mr. Wingo paused and looked up at the ceiling. His lips moved. He muttered of figures and sums.
Tip O'Gorman awaited his pleasure. What else was there to do?
”I think between nine and ten thousand is nearer the correct amount for li'l me,” Billy said at last.
”What?” screeched Tip, fairly jarred off his balance at last.
Billy made his position plain. ”Say ten thousand in round numbers.”
”Ten thousand devils!”
”Not devils--dollars.”
”You're crazy!”
”It's the least you can do,” insisted Billy.
Tip O'Gorman made an odd noise in his throat. After making which, a dog would have bitten Mr. Wingo. Tip may have been a bad old man, but he was not a dog. He really dissembled his foamingly murderous rage very well indeed.
”I'll have to see the rest of the boys,” said Tip O'Gorman, and he actually smiled.
”Why, no,” contradicted Billy. ”You won't. Why should you? Rafe and you are the dogs with the bra.s.s collars in Crocker County, and you wear more bra.s.s than Rafe, when you come right down to it. What you say usually goes without question.”
”I never said ten thousand for a sheriff before,” protested Tip.
”There's nothing like establis.h.i.+ng a precedent. Don't be hidebound.
This is the newer generation, and advanced age, you know; one that's advanced by jumps, if you could only be brought to realize it.”
Tip held up an arresting hand. ”Don't joke,” he said. ”I realize what the blessed age is doing, but doubling the ante this way is more than a jump--it's a mighty wild leap.”
”It can be done,” Billy said placidly. ”What are impossibilities to-day become realities to-morrow. Q.E.D. P.D.Q.”
Tip O'Gorman raised plump hands to the level of his ears. ”I didn't think when I proposed you for sheriff,” he remarked earnestly, ”that I was proposing a road agent too. Oh, you burglar! I do admire a hawg.
Yes, sir. But what can a feller do? Ten thousand goes. About those deputies--I don't suppose you'll have any objections, now that you've got what you want, to appointing Johnson and Kenealy?”
”Oh, yes, indeed I have--plenty. No Johnson and no Kenealy. s.h.i.+llman and Tyler. Yes.”
”No. You've got to earn that ten thousand.”
”Bribery and corruption, Tip, is a serious crime.”