Page:Raymond Spears--Diamond Tolls.djvu/145



HOUGH one travels like the wind, word of his coming will precede him down the Mississippi River if he is of interest. The fact that White Collar Dan had left the Hickman Hospital was printed in several newspapers up and down the river, with the result that Junker Frest and José Macrado learned the fact on the evening of the same day—this to make plain what might seem to be a mysterious shantyboat grape-vine telegraph.

"He was accompanied by his friend." the news item declared, "one Charles Urleigh, believed to be from Cincinnati. Urleigh purchased a shantyboat at Hickman bar, and the two floated away down the river together, leaving the mystery of White Collar Dan's shooting as much involved as ever."

"Now what do you make of that?" Macrado demanded, reading the item with pains and determination, in Palura's wine room in Mendova.

"Looks like Dan'd found somebody to fish and cut bait for him," Frest declared. "Dan had nine hundred left in his pockets. I know that, because 139