box. Don't make any mistakes about that, old-timer.”
Webster's face suddenly was serious; the bantering intonation in his voice was gone, and a new, slightly strident note had crept into it. But Jerome, engrossed in his own affairs, failed to observe the menace in that swift transition of mood in his companion. He waved his hand soothingly.
“All right, old Johnny Pepper-box, have it your own way. Nevertheless, I'm a little mystified. The last I knew of you two, you had testified against him in the high-grader trials at Cripple Creek, and he had pulled out under a cloud, even after his acquittal.”
“Give a dog a bad name, and it will stick to him,” Webster retorted. “Of course I testified against him. As engineer for the Mine Owners' Association, I had to. The high-grade ore was found in his assay office, and the circumstantial evidence was complete, and I admit Billy was acquitted merely because I and others could not swear positively that the ore came from any certain mine. It was the same old story, Neddy. It's become history in all mining camps. You can be morally certain that high-grade ore has been stolen from your mine, but unless you catch the ore thief in the act, how can you prove it? High-grade ore is blind goods and is not confined to any certain man-owned spot on this wicked earth—so there you are! I suppose you read the newspaper reports and believed them, just as everybody else does.”
“Well, forget it, Jack. It's all over long ago, and forgotten.”
“It wasn't all over so long ago as you seem to think. I suppose you knew the Holman gang was afterward sent to the penitentiary for those same high-grade operations?”
“Yes.”
“But I'll bet my new plug hat you never knew I was the Hawkshaw that sent them there! You bet I was! Billy Geary's acquittal didn't end my interest in the case—not by a jugful! I fought the case against the friends of the Holman crew among the mine owners themselves; and it cost me my good job, my prestige as a mining engineer, and thirty thousand dollars of money that I'd slaved to get together. They squeezed me, Neddy—squeezed me hard like a lemon, and threw me away, but I got them! I should tell a man! Of course you never knew this, Neddy, and for that matter, neither
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