Page:The man on horseback (IA manonhorseback00abdurich).pdf/32

16 "Sure. Garrett spilled the beans."

"Damned good beans," commented Tom, "fine and rich and nutritious and juicy."

"Yes. But look out, young fellow. Every con agent in the Inland Empire is going to lay for you with a flannel-wrapped brick and a cold deck."

Tom waved a careless hand.

"A fat lot of good it'll do them," he laughed. "My mother was Scotch and as careful as a setting hen, and l'ye followed the range all my life. Bulliest little training-school to kick some horse sense into you. Well, Wedekind," he leaned across the table and his eyes lit up with a frank, boyish appeal, "you're a good friend of mine, aren’t you?"

"None better!" came the kindly reply.

"Fine and dandy. You see, I want to talk to you about that mine."

Wedekind smiled.

"Need a stake to start your developing work?" he asked, slapping his check book on the table. "Name your figure, my boy."

Tom shook his head. "Thanks. It isn't that. It's just some advice I want about my partner. The old son-of-a-gun has gone loco"

"Gold gone to his head?"

“Not a bit. Gold's gone to his feet, They're cold, Wedekind, as cold as clay." And he told the other about the curious sensation, as of a far-off echo, he and his partner had experienced in the tunnel, adding that Truex resolutely refused to have anything more to do with the Yankee Doodle Glory, and showing Garrett's assay report with the paragraph about the unknown substance on the bottom.

“Garrett says it's all right?" asked Wedekind.

“Sure. As right as rain. Says that foreign metal