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"I'll bet it wasn't nothin' at all," grinned Jim Conlow. "Possum Conlow" we called him for that secretive grin on his shallow face. "I'll bet it wath a whole gang of Thiennes," lisped tow-headed Bud Anderson. "They ain't no Injuns nearer than the reserve down the river, and ain't been no Injuns in Springvale for a long time, 'cept annuity days," declared Tell Mapleson.
"Reckon he zigzagged back to town to get somethin' he forgot at Conlow's shop," put in Cam. "Didn't find any dead dogs nor children next mornin', did ye, O'mie?" Conlow kept the vilest whiskey ever sold to a poor drink-thirsty Redskin. Everybody knew it except those whom the grand jury called into counsel. I saw my father's brow darken. "Conlow will meet his match one of these days," he muttered.
Just at the steep bend in the street she came face to face with Lettie Conlow. The latter wore a grin of triumph as the two met. "Good-evening, Marjie. I s'pose you've heard the news?" "What news?" asked Marjie. "I haven't heard anything new to-day." "Oh, yes, you have, too. You know all about it; but I'd not care if I was you." Marjie was on her guard in a moment.
Bill is president of the bank on the corner where the old Whately store stood and is a share-holder in several big Kansas City concerns. Bessie lost her rosy cheeks years ago, but she has her seven children; the youngest of them, Phil, named for me, will graduate from the Kansas University this year. Lettie Conlow was always on the uncertain list with us.
Marjie could not help smiling now. O'mie had not a soul to call his next of kin. "Oh, yis, I wint," he continued, "on tin days' holiday. The actual start to it was on the evenin' Phil got home from Topeka. The night of the party at Anderson's Lettie Conlow comes into the store just at closin'. I was behind a pile of ginghams fixin' some papers and cord below the counter.
Go now to your own tribe and do it quickly." Slowly, like a promise made before high heaven, he answered me. "I will go, but I shall see you there. When we meet again, my hand will have you by the throat. And I don't care whose son you are." He slid down the cliff-side like a lizard, and was gone. I turned and stumbled through the bushes full into Lettie Conlow crouching among them.
The next day I enlisted in Troop A of the Nineteenth Kansas Cavalry, and was quartered temporarily in the State House, north of Fifth Street, on Kansas Avenue. Tillhurst was not admitted to the regiment, as my father had predicted. Neither was Jim Conlow, who had come up to Topeka for that purpose.
I remember seeing Conlow and Mapleson and Dodd sauntering carelessly about in different parts of the town, especially upon Cliff Street, which was unusual for them. Just at nightfall the town was filled with strangers again. Yeager and his companion, who had been water-bound, returned with half a dozen more to the Cambridge House, and other unknown men were washed in from the west.
"Lettie Conlow," he said, leaning toward her and speaking calmly, "you may call me what you please Lord, it couldn't hurt me but you, nor nobody else, man or woman, praist or pirate, is comin' into this store while I'm alone in controllin' it, and call Marjie Whately nor any other dacent woman by any evil names.
After all, it was not Tillhurst, but Jim Conlow, who had a Topeka story to tell when he went back to Springvale; and it was Lettie who edited and published her brother's story. Lettie had taken on a new degree of social importance with her elevation to a clerkship in Judson's store, and she was quick to take advantage of it.
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