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Updated: June 4, 2025
Upon the twentieth day of September Greek Conniston, being in Valley City, received a telegram which puzzled him. It was from Edwin Corliss, private secretary and confidential man of affairs of William Conniston, Senior, of Wall Street. Conniston replied immediately and by wire. During the three days following he received and despatched several telegrams.
They assured him that they had not. "Then if you've got any chuck you want to warm up you can sling it in my fryin'-pan." He dragged a soap-box to the tail end of the buckboard and began taking out several packages. "We didn't bring anything with us," Conniston told him. "We didn't think " The new-comer dropped his frying-pan, put his two hands on his hips, and stared at them.
He learned many, many little things that day, and some big things. And the biggest thing came to him suddenly, and brought a look into his eyes which had never been there before. He learned that Greek Conniston, the son of William Conniston, of Wall Street, was the most inefficient man upon the range.
It was from her uncle. In a dozen lines it stated that she, Mary Josephine, was dead, and it reiterated the threat against Derwent Conniston should he ever dare to return to England. A choking cry came to her lips. "And that THAT was it?" "Yes, that and the hurt in my head," he said, remembering the part he must play.
He had lived the great lie as he had strengthened himself to live it, but success was no longer a triumph. There rushed into his brain like a consuming flame the desire to confess the truth, to tell this girl whose arms were about him that he was not Derwent Conniston, her brother, but John Keith, the murderer.
The fifth man contented himself with small bets. Presently the younger of the two cowboys, the fellow whom Conniston had seen at the store in the afternoon, shoved his last two dollars and a half onto the table, lost, and got to his feet, shrugging his shoulders. "Cleaned," he grunted, laconically. "Gimme a drink, Smiley." He went to the bar with one lingering look behind him.
"Look here, Con," Pete said, finally, his tone half belligerent, while his eyes, usually so frank, refused to meet Conniston's amused regard, "what I do an' why I do it ain't any other jasper's concern, is it?" "Certainly not," answered Conniston, promptly. "Certainly not mine. I didn't go to frolic into your personal business, Pete."
"Miss Jocelyn says as how she ain't been interdooced," Lonesome Pete was saying, his hat turning nervously in his hands, his face flushing as he met Conniston's eyes. "Shake han's with Mr. Conniston, Miss Jocelyn."
"Argyl," he told her, speaking quietly, but knowing that there was a tremor in his voice which he could not drive from it "Argyl, do you know how much to-day means to me? Do you know that it is the most gloriously wonderful day I have ever known? Do you know that I have fought hard for this day, and that the hardest fighting I had before me was the fight against Greek Conniston the snob?
In his years of aloneness he had grown into the habit of talking to himself or with himself to keep up his courage and sanity. "Keith, old boy, we've got to fight it out," he would say. Now it was, "Conniston, old chap, we'll win or die." After the third day, he never spoke of John Keith except as a man who was dead. And over the dead John Keith he spread Conniston's mantle.
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