Page:Jackson Gregory--joyous trouble maker.djvu/187

Rh At one o'clock Carruthers, a young, quick eyed, almost gaudily dressed young fellow, threw open Steele's door, bursting in upon him breezily.

"Hello, Bill," he cried warmly. "Been looking for you high and low. The melon's dead ripe and … Busted again? "

Bob Carruthers … known not so very long ago as Plunging Bobbie Carruthers … had reached that time of life when a man must stand upright on his own pair of legs or just wabble. And Bob Carruthers didn't wabble. Perhaps one reason was Sylvia Templeton, Mrs. Carruthers now for two years. At any rate what his father, Railroad Carruthers, had done before him in the East, Bobbie Carruthers was reported to be doing in his own way and a kindred line in the West.

As their hands fell apart the two men looked keenly into each other's eyes.

"Comparatively speaking," returned Steele, shoving a chair to his guest and sitting on the edge of his bed, his knee caught up between two strong, brown hands, "I'm busted. But I've got enough for a small bet yet, a sort of entering wedge, you know. If I scrape hard I can pry about twenty thousand loose. If the melon is ripe as you say, and you still figure that you want me in on the slicing, I'm ready. I've got a side line, however, and I want another fifty thousand to bear my little wad company."

"Mine, I suppose?" asked Carruthers.

Steele nodded. Carruthers shook his head and sighed.

"Why can't you let the other boobs dig the yellow