son, I would have wanted him to be just like Billy. You know, Bill tied onto me when he was about eighteen. He's rising twenty-six now. He came to me at the Bonnie Claire mine fresh from high school, and I staked him to a drill; but he didn't stick there long. I saw he was too good a boy to be a mucker all his days.”
Webster smiled reminiscently and went on: “I'll never forget the day Billy challenged a big Cornish shift-boss that called him out of his name. The Cousin Jack could fight, too, but Billy walked around him like a cooper around a barrel, and when he finished, I fired the Cousin Jack and gave Billy his job!”
He chuckled softly at the remembrance. “Too bad!” he continued. “That boy had brains and grit and honour, and he shouldn't have held that trial against me. But Billy was young, I suppose, and he just couldn't understand my position. It takes the hard old years to impart common sense to a man, and I suppose Billy couldn't understand why I had to be true to my salt. He should have known I hadn't a leg to stand on when I took the stand for the prosecution—not a scintilla of evidence to present, except that the high-grade had been found in his assay office. Jerome, I curse the day I took that boy out from underground and put him in the Bonnie Claire assay office to learn the business. How could I know that the Holman gang had cached the stuff in his shack?”
“Well, it's too bad,” Jerome answered dully. He was quite willing that the subject of conversation should be changed. “I'm glad to get the right dope on the boy, anyhow. We might be able to hand him a good job to make up for the injustice. Have another drink?”
“Not until I read this letter. Now, who the dickens knew I was headed for Denver and the Engineers' Club? I didn't tell a soul, and I only arrived this morning.”
He turned to the last page to ascertain the identity of his correspondent, and his facial expression ran the gamut from surprise to a joy that was good to see.
It was a long letter, and John Stuart Webster read it deliberately. When he had read it once, he reread it; after which he sat in silent contemplation of the design of the carpet for fully a minute before reaching for the bell. A servant responded immediately.
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