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Are you going on to Meander soon?" "Yes; I want to be there to file when my time comes." "I've thought of going over there to feel things out, too," Dr. Slavens went on. "This place will shrink in a few days like a piece of wet leather in the sun. They'll have nothing left of it but the stores, and no business to sustain them until the country around here is settled. That may be a long time yet.
Her purpose in going to Meander was, primarily, to enlist the sheriff of the county in the search for Dr. Slavens, and, remotely, to be there when her day came for filing on a piece of land. "I made up my mind to do it after we came back from the cañon," she explained. "There's nothing more to be hoped for here.
Slavens, there might be a chance to hook up with Walker under such an arrangement, put his whole life into it, and learn the business from the ground up. He could be doing that while Agnes was making her home on her claim, perhaps somewhere near a few hundred miles and if he could see a gleam at the farther end of the undertaking after a season he could ask her to wait.
It's illegal all through, but they say Boyle's got such a pull through his father that anything he wants will go." Until that hour Agnes had kept her faith in Dr. Slavens and her hope that he would appear in time to save his valuable claim. Now hope was gone, and faith, perhaps, had suffered a tarnishment of luster. For that is the way of human judgment.
The clothiers of Meander had fitted Slavens out with a very good serge suit. Tan oxfords replaced his old battered shoes. A physician had dressed the cut on his forehead, where adhesive plaster, neatly holding gauze over the cut, took away the aspect of grimness and gravity which the bloody bandage of the morning had imparted.
There appeared nothing for it but to withdraw the stake and sneak off with only half of his backer's loss of the afternoon retrieved. He was reaching out his hand to pull the money away, when the little fellow with whiskers caught his arm. Slavens thought he read a signal in the touch, and turned as if to consult his roll again.
"Something has happened to him," she whispered, easing in the words the pent alarm of her breast. "But we'll find him," he comforted her. "Comanche can't hide a man as big as Dr. Slavens very long." "He'll have to be in Meander day after tomorrow to file on his claim," she said. "If we can't find him in time, he'll lose it."
He bumped his bony shoulders over his paper again. Undaunted, Slavens asked him the hour. The old clerk drew out a cheap watch and held it close to his grizzled face. "Time for all honest men but me and you to be in bed, I reckon. It's a quarter to one." A quarter to one!
Sergeant Schaefer, having failed of his expectations, felt a revival of interest in the military life, and announced that he would leave on the first train out next morning. That night the price of cots suffered a dispiriting drop. Fifty cents would hire the most exclusive bed in the phantom city of Comanche. As for Dr. Slavens, the day's events had left him with a dazed feeling of insecurity.
We found out about it after we came here." "Of course Shanklin was in with him some way. They're all crooks," the doctor commented. "Perhaps the other man was that wicked chief of police," said she. "I wouldn't consider him above it." "Nor I," Slavens admitted. "But I don't know; I never heard him speak. I thought I heard that other voice this morning here in Meander, but I'm not sure.
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