Page:The achievements of Luther Trant - Balmer and MacHarg - 1910.djvu/270

240 "In retaliation, because he thought Tyler had shot Len Findlay?"

"Perhaps; but I never thought so, and I don't think so now," Sheppard returned decisively. "For old Jim Tyler was the least up to that sort of thing of any of us—a tongue-tied, inoffensive old fellow—and he was dealer in our games; but outside of that Jim didn't have nerve enough to handle his own money. But for some reason Neal seemed sure it was old Jim who had shot Len, and he made Enoch Findlay believe it, too. So, no matter who actually fired the bullet, it was Neal. Well, it was up to me to look after old Jim's widow and his boy. That was necessary; for after Jim was dead, I found a funny thing. He had taken his share with the rest of us in the profits of the game; and the rest of us were getting rich by that time—for we weren't any of us gamblers; not in the way of playing it back into the game, that is; but though I had always supposed that Jim was buying his land like the rest—and his widow told me so, too—I found nothing when he was dead!"

"But you implied just now," Trant put in again quickly, "that Tyler might have had someone else investing for him. Did you look into that at the time?"

"Yes; I asked them all, but no one knew anything. But we're coming to that," the old man answered impatiently. "I wanted you to see how it was that I began to look after young Jim and take an interest in him and do things for him till—till he became what he was to me. Neal never liked my looking after the boy from the first; we quarreled about it