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Well, you saw 'em together as we walked out here, an' I'm bound to admit that they make a powerful likely couple." He hesitated, as if he were waiting for the candidate to speak, but Mr. Grayson was silent. He glanced once at the strong face of Plummer, drawn as if in pain, and then he looked into the valley a thousand feet below. Jimmy Grayson did not care to speak.
He only wanted the appearance of an "even break," with the later plea of "self-defence," which has shielded so many bad men from punishment for murder. Plummer now tried treachery, and told Crawford they would be friends. All the time he was hunting a chance to kill him. At length he held Crawford up in a restaurant, and stood waiting for him with a rifle.
Harley was not alone interested in "King" Plummer, but also in the kiss that he had put upon the white forehead of Sylvia Morgan and his boisterous joy at seeing her. Since he was not her father, it was likely that he was her uncle, not by blood, as Jimmy Grayson was, but as the husband of an aunt, perhaps. Yes, this must be it, he concluded, and the kiss seemed more reasonable.
Naturally, I thought, Plummer would prefer Hewitt; but in this case I should for once be ahead of my friend, and have the pleasure of relating the circumstances of the capture to him, instead of listening, as usual, to his own quiet explanations of the manner in which the case had been brought to a successful issue. So I took my hat and went. "Best let me go in front," whispered the "nark."
Then the Old Man spoke to the men. "Now, men!" he began. "This is no time for dilly-dallying. The Second Mate and I will go aloft, and I want about half a dozen of you to come along with us, and carry lights. Plummer and Jessop here, have volunteered. I want four or five more of you. Step out now, some of you!" There was no hesitation whatever, now; and the first man to come forward was Quoin.
There was nothing depreciatory in this beyond the difference between age and great achievement and youth which had not yet had the time to fulfil its promise, and Harley, because of it, felt no decrease of liking and respect for "King" Plummer. "The far Northwest is for you solidly, Jimmy," said the big man, with a joyous smile.
"I guess I haven't the polish that those Eastern fellows put on, or that is put on them, but out here in the mountains I amount to somebody you must let me brag a little, Sylvia and if a man doesn't bow pretty low to Mrs. William Plummer, I'll have to get out my old six-shooter I haven't carried one now for ten years and shoot all the hair off the top of his head."
She ate, too, with an appetite that the mountain air sharpened, and she thrilled with strength and hope. Mr. Plummer, from some motive that she did not understand, kept himself in the background during the stop; nor did she know how his big heart was filled with wrath and gloom.
As if in supplementary and conclusive justification of those words, Dickens, within less than five years afterwards, had woven his graceful and pathetic fancies about the homely joys and sorrows of Bob Cratchit, of Toby Veck, and of Caleb Plummer, of a little Clerk, a little Ticket-porter, and a little Toy-maker.
She did not have to be told that her aunt had written to Mr. Plummer; she guessed that Mr.
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