Page:Allan Dunn--Dead Man's Gold.djvu/51

Rh "Now, hain't that too bad?" retorted Lefty with a wink. "W'ot 'll a pore feller do for snake bite in the desert? Jest as long as there's them that wants booze, there's goin' to be them that makes it. And, so long as it's made, it can be got. I hain't goin' to worry. Listen," he whispered, as Healy grabbed for the moving train a car ahead of theirs. "I can lift that telegram 'thout 'is ever knowin' it. And put it back the same. Wot price that?"

"It is probably something about that money he said he was going to get in Los Angeles," said Stone. "We'll play fair as long as he does, Lefty."

"Hany spondulicks that guy puts up has strings and glue on it," muttered Lefty as Healy came through the car toward the rear platform where the others still stood as the train moved out. Stone smiled at Lefty's modernized phrasing of the old saw, "Beware of Greeks bringing gifts."

But Stone settled firmly in his mind the intention to supplement Healy's partnership agreement with a deed that would tie the three of them, their heirs and assignees, to deliver a fair half of their mutual holdings and proceeds to the missing daughter of Wat Lyman, and to place such sums in trust until every effort had been exhausted in the search for her. Stone knew a man, a member of a firm of attorneys in Los Angeles, and a personal friend of his from old-time affiliations, who might be depended upon to make such a document. All the way to Los Angeles he hammered his arguments home, winning a reluctant victory at last.