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I gave a quick glance around at the comfortable house under its elms and maples saw the big, red barn shining in the sun and the pump under the grape arbour. I waved good-bye to Mrs. McNally who was watching us in silent amazement. Pegasus threw her solid weight against the traces and Parnassus swung round and rolled past the gate. We turned into the Redfield road.
So when her husband, Clem Dewler, went to this priest, Father McNally, and complained that she would run away from the shack and hang around the dance-halls down at this mining-camp, Father McNally made up his mind to learn her a lesson. Well, he goes down and finds her jest comin' out of Tim Healy's place with two other women.
It lay, however, just below a deep rock cut that had been made in a mountain crag and beyond a sharp curve. McNally leaned from his cab window, and when the lightning flashed, saw that the cut was clear of rock and released the brakes slightly to allow the long train to slip through the reverse curve at the bridge. Curves cramp a train, and a smooth runner likes to feel them glide smoothly.
I put in plenty of curlicues after the figures so that no one could raise the check into $400,000; then I got out my old rattan suit case and put in some clothes. The whole business didn't take me ten minutes. I came downstairs to find Mrs. McNally looking sourly at the Parnassus from the kitchen door. "You going away in that that 'bus, Mis' McGill?" she asked. "Yes, Mrs.
Of course there was the inevitable bully, swaggering fiercely and truculently back and forth, his belt full of weapons. Nobody took him very seriously; but, on the other hand, everybody seemed to take mighty good care not to run definitely counter to him. In the course of his wanderings he came to our end of the bar, and jostled McNally aside.
McNally's plump hand came down softly on the table. "Good!" he said under his breath. But Mr. Thompson failed to understand. "But the contract?" he said. "Such a contract would be a little less valuable than that waste paper," Porter replied politely, indicating the crumpled sheets on the table. Then he turned to McNally and asked, "How many men will it take to swing it?"
"Those devils have harried our stock and killed our pardner; and I'm not going to set quiet and let them do it." He turned to us: "Boys," said he, "I know you're with me thar. But I'm going to git our friends yere to go with us. Old man," he said to Pine, "you and yore sons help us with this job, and we'll locate you on the purtiest diggings in these hills." "You bet!" agreed McNally.
He knew Tillman City, and more to the point, he knew Michael Blaney, Chairman of the Council Finance Committee. Finesse would not be needed, subtlety would be lost, with Blaney, and so Mr. McNally was prepared to talk bluntly. And on occasion Mr. McNally could be terseness itself. On his arrival he took a cab for the hotel.
The rest of us uttered a yell of joy and relief. One of the men who had been sleeping around the fire was McNally himself. We drew together, explaining, congratulating. The strangers, six in number, turned out to be travellers from the eastern side of the ranges. They listened with interest and attention to our account of the Indian attack.
Her hair was coiled above her forehead in easy disorder. McNally, sitting back in the shadow, looked fixedly at her, and as he looked it seemed to him that her beauty spiced the atmosphere. He found himself drawing in his breath keenly and almost audibly, and gripping the arms of the easy-chair: with a sudden half-amused feeling of boyishness he relaxed his grip and leaned back comfortably.
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