Page:The achievements of Luther Trant - Balmer and MacHarg - 1910.djvu/272

242 "You see, the only real objection that Neal had been able to keep against young Jim was that he was a pauper—penniless but for me. And these papers Jim had were notes and memorandum which showed why Jim was a pauper and who had made him that, and how Neal himself had got the better half of old Jim's best properties. For the papers were private notes and memoranda of money that old Jim Tyler had given Neal to invest in land for him; among them a paper in Neal's writing acknowledging old Jim's half interest in Neal's best lots. Then there were some personal memorandum of Tyler's stuck with these, part of which we couldn't make out, except that it had to do with the shooting of Len Findlay; but the rest was clear—showed clear that, just before he was shot, old Jim Tyler had become afraid of Neal and was trying to make him convert his papers into regular titles and take his things out of Neal's hands.

"I saw, of course, that young Jim must know everything then; so the only thing I could do was to stop him from hunting up Neal that morning and in that mood with a gun in his hand. But he laughed at me; said I ought to know he hadn't come to kill Leigh's father, but only to force a different understanding then and there; and his gun might come in handy—but he would keep his head as well as his gun. But he didn't. For though he didn't find Neal then, he came across Findlay and Chapin and blurted it all out to them, so that they stayed with him till he promised to go home, which he didn't do either; for one of our Indians, coming up the trail early next morning with