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Altogether Hillerton placed a high value upon his confidential clerk, and it was with a very genuine good-will that he followed up the last recorded observation, by saying, carelessly: "I hope you've kept out of the thing yourself, Peckham." "Oh, yes!" Peckham answered, in a tone of indifference, copied after Hillerton's own.
He was bound to come to grief sooner or later, but that was no business of Hillerton's. On May 7th, Hillerton came down with pleurisy and Peckham suddenly found himself at the head of affairs. Hillerton had no partner; no one but Peckham could take his place. And in Peckham's moral constitution was a substratum of unshakable fidelity upon which the astute Hillerton had built.
When all declared with one accord that "if Lame Gulch panned out as it was dead sure to do, Springtown would be the biggest little town in all creation," Hillerton's smile became slightly accentuated, but a wintry chill of incredulity had a neutralizing effect upon it.
One morning the last of February, half-a-dozen men, among them a couple who had just come down from the camp, stood about Hillerton's office or sat on the railing of the sanctum, giving rough but graphic accounts of the sights to be seen at Lame Gulch. The company was not a typical Western crowd. The men were nearly all well dressed and exhibited evidences of good breeding.
I've no doubt he will be about again by the end of the month." Peckham went white to the lips. "I suppose that's the best you can promise," he said. "Yes, but I can promise that safely." The confidential clerk went back to the office filled with a profound loathing of life. "If liquor wasn't so nasty, I'd take to drink," he said to himself as he sat down at Hillerton's desk and set to work.
In fact, it was largely owing to Hillerton's inquiry and the hint of resentment it excited, that Peckham put a hundred dollars into the Yankee Doodle Mining and Milling Co. that very day. To be sure, he acted on a "straight tip," but straight tips were as thick as huckleberries in Springtown, and this was the first time he had availed himself of one.
The young man's countenance had never been an expressive one, and during the three years he had spent in Hillerton's employ, his face had lost what little mobility it had ever possessed. He was a pale, hollow-chested individual, with a bulging forehead, curiously marked eyebrows, and a prominent and sensitive nose.
Besides that, Hillerton's tone was getting more and more lofty on the subject of stock gambling, and the idea of acting contrary to such unquestioned sagacity had more relish than most ideas possessed. Meanwhile the excitement grew. Lame Gulch was "panning out" with startling results.
It was certainly a gay one that holiday week. Beginning with the James Blaisdells' housewarming it was one continuous round of dances, dinners, sleigh-rides and skating parties for Hillerton's young people particularly for the Blaisdells, the Pennocks, and the Gaylords. Mr.
Peckham, the confidential clerk, shrugged his shoulders, and said he "guessed it was about so." Hillerton's confidential clerk usually assented to the dictum of his principal. It saved trouble and hurt nobody. Not that Lewis Peckham was without opinions of his own; but he took no special interest in them, and rarely put himself to the trouble of defending them.
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