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Updated: June 5, 2025
"You done all I could expect," said Lawlor aloud as Bard came up, "but to-morrow go back on the same job and try to get something definite." To Bard: "Here's your place, partner. Just been tellin' Duffy, there on your right, about some work. Some of the doggies have been rustled lately and we're on their trail."
As the door closed the grim realization came to Lawlor that he could not face the tenderfoot his staring eyes and his pallor would betray him even if the jerking of his hands did not. He swung about in the comfortable chair, seized a book and whisking it open bowed his head to read. All that he saw was a dance of irregular black lines: voices sounded through the hall outside.
The thing could be done, of course, but the point was to do it with the minimum of danger. So they waited, and talked, and ate and always from the corners of their eyes were conscious of the slightly built, inoffensive man who sat beside Lawlor near the head of the table.
No semblance of a smile altered the faces of the cowpunchers around the table, but glances of vague meaning were interchanged. Kilrain reappeared almost at once, bearing a large box of cigars under each arm. "The eats bein' over," announced Lawlor, "we can now light up. Open them boxes, Shorty. Am I goin' to work on you the rest of my life teachin' you how to serve cigars?"
Kilrain falling to the temptation, asked: "Where's the key to the cabinet?" For Drew kept his tobacco in a small cabinet, locked because of long experience with tobacco-loving employees. Lawlor started to speak, checked himself, fumbled through his pockets, and then roared: "Smash the door open. I misplaced the key."
Their interchange of whispers was like a muffled rapid-fire, for they had to finish before young Bard, now just entering the room, could reach them and take his designated chair at the right of Lawlor. "He knows," muttered Lawlor. "Hell! Then it's all up?" "No; keep bluffin'; wait. How's everything?" "Gregory ain't come in, but Drew may put him wise before he gets inside the house."
"They's no harm intended him, on my honour, Sally," said Lawlor. "All he's got to do is give up his gun and and" he finished weakly "let his hands be tied." "Is that all?" said Sally scornfully. "Don't follow me, Sally," said Bard. "Stay out of this. Boys, you may have been paid high, but I don't think you've been paid high enough to risk taking a chance with me.
And it's my business to know how things ring in that way." There was a little pause, while the lawyer moved back and forth nervously. Then, he added: "I believe Lawlor would have suspended sentence if it hadn't been for your talk with him." There were not wanting signs that Gilder was impressed. But the gentler fibers of the man were atrophied by the habits of a lifetime.
Some such feeling sent a chill through Lawlor's blood. "Hello!" called Calamity Ben. "Humph!" grunted Lawlor. "Got a visitor, Mr. Drew." "Bring him in." And Lawlor cleared his throat. "All right, here he is." The door closed, and Lawlor snapped the book shut. "Drew!" said a low voice. The cowpuncher turned in his chair.
Kilrain drew a long breath, regarded Lawlor again with that considerate, expectant eye, and then turned on his heel and strode from the room. Back to Bard came fragments of tremendous cursing of an epic breadth and a world-wide inclusiveness. "Got to do things like this once in a while to keep 'em under my thumb," Lawlor explained genially.
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