She opened her alligator-skin handbag and took out a folded paper. She jerked it open and glanced at it, and back at Wolfe. 'May I?'
'Do I see typewriting?'
She nodded. 'This is a copy. The original is put away.' She brushed her hair back with a hand up and dipping swift like a bird. 'This isn't a complete copy. There is- this is- just the part to read.
'So, dearest Lola, since a man can't tell what is going to nap-pen to him 'here, or when, I've decided to write you about a little incident that occurred last week, and make arrangements to he sure it gets to you, in case I never get home to tell you about it. Ill have to begin away hack.
'I've told you a lot of wild tales about the old days in Nevada. I've told you this one too, hut I'll repeat it here briefty. It was at Silver City, in 1897. I was 25 years old, so it was 10 years before I met you. I was broke, and so was the gang of youngsters I'm telling about. They were all youngsters but one. We weren't friends, there was no such thing as a friend around there. Most of the bunch of 2000 or so that inhabited Silver City camp at that time were a good deal older than us, which was how we happened to get together- temporarily. Everything was temporary.
'The ringleader of our gang was a kid we called Rubber on account of the way he bounced back up when he got knocked down. His name was Coleman, but I never knew his first name, or if 1 did 1 can't remember it, though I've often tried. Because Rubber was our leader, someone cracked a joke one day that we should call ourselves The Rubber Band, and we did. Pretty soon most of Silver City was calling us that.
'One of the gang, a kid named George Rowley, shot a man and killed him. From what I heard-I didn't see it-he had as good a right to shoot as was usually needed around there, but the trouble was that the one he killed happened to he a member of the Vigilance Committee. It was at night, 24 hows after the shooting, that they decided to hang him. Rowley hadn't had sense enough to make a getaway, so they took him and shut him up in a shanty until daylight, with one of their number for a guard, an Irishman. As Harlan Scovil would say-I'll never forget Harlan-he was a kind of a man named Mike Walsh.
'Rowley went after his guard, Mike Walsh. I mean talking to him. Finally, around midnight, he persuaded Mike to send for Rubber Coleman. Rubber had a talk with him and. Mike. Then there was a lot of conspiring, and Rubber did a lot of dickering with Rowley. We were gathered in the dark in the sagebrush out hack of John's Palace, a shack out at the edge of the city-'
Clara Fox looked up. 'My father underscored the word city.'
Wolfe nodded. 'Properly, no doubt.'
She went on: '-and we had been drinking some and were having a swell time. Around two o'clock Rubber showed up again and lit matches to show us a paper George Rowley had signed, with him and Mike Walsh as witnesses. I've told you about it. I cant give it to you word for word, hut this is exactly what it said. It said that his real name wasnt George Rowley, and that he wasn't giving his real name in writing, hut that he had told it to Rubber Coleman. It said that he was from a wealthy family in England, and that if he got out of Silver City alive he would go hack there, and some day he would get a share of the family pile. It said it wouldn't be a major share because he wasn't an oldest son. Then it hereby agreed that whenever and whatever he got out of his family connections, he would give us half of it, provided we got him safe out of Silver City and safe from pursuit, before the time came to hang him.
'We were young, and thought we were adventurers, and we were half drunk or maybe more. I doubt if any of us had any idea that we would ever get hold of any of the noble English wealth, except possibly Rubber Coleman, but the idea of the night rescue of a member of our gang was all to the good. Rubber had another paper ready too, all written up. It was headed, PLEDGE OF THE RUBBER BAND, and we all signed it. It had already been signed by Mike Walsh. In it we agreed to an equal division of anything coming from George Rowley, no matter who got it or when.
'We were all broke except Vic Lindquist, who had a bag of gold dust. It was Rubber's suggestion that we get Turtle-back in. Turtle-back was an old-timer who owned the fastest horse in Silver City. tie had no use for that kind of a horse; he only happened to own it because he had won it in a poker game a few days before. I went with Rubber down to Turtleback's shanty. We offered him Vic Lindquist's dust for the horse, but he said it wasn't enough. We had expected that. Then Rubber explained to him what was up, told him the whole story, and offered him an equal share with the rest of us, for the horse, and the dust to boot. Turtleback was still half asleep. Finally, when he got the idea, he blinked at us, and then all of a sudden he slapped his knee and began to guffaw. He said that by God he always had wanted to own a part of England, and anyway he would probably lose the horse before he got a chance to ride it much. Rubber got out the PLEDGE OF THE RUBBER BAND, but Turtle-back wouldn't have his name added to it, saying he didn't like to have his name written down anywhere. He would trust us to see that he got his share. Rubber scribbled out a bill of sale for the horse, but Turtle-back wouldn't sign that either; he said I was there as a witness, the horse was ours, and that was enough. He put on his boots and took us over to Johnson's corral, and we saddled the horse, a palomino with a white face, and led it around the long way, back of the shacks and tents and along a gully, to where the gang was.
'We rescued George Rowley all right. You've heard me tell about it, how we loosened a couple of boards and then set fire to the shanty where they had him, and how he busted out of the loose place in the excitement, and how Mike Walsh, who was known to be a dead shot, emptied two guns at him without hitting him. Rowley was in the saddle and away before anyone else realized it, and nobody bothered to chase him because they were too busy putting out the fire.
'The story came out later about our buying Turtle-back's horse, but by that time people's minds were on something else, and anyway our chief offense was that we had started the fire and it couldn't he proved we had done that. It might have been different if the man we helped to escape had done something really criminal, like cheating at cards or stealing somebody's dust.
'So far as I know, none of us ever saw Rowley or heard of him since that night. You've heard me mention twenty times, when you and I were having hard going, that I'd like to find him and leam if he owed me anything, but you know I never did and of course I meant it more or less as a joke anyhow. But recently, here in Prance, two things have come up about it. The first one is a thought that's in my mind all the time, what if I do get mine over here, what kind of a fix am I leaving you and the kid in? My little daughter Clara- God how I'd love to see her. And you. To hell with that stuff when it's no use, but I'd gladly stand up and let the damn Germans shoot me tomorrow morning if I could see you two right this minute. The answer to my question is, a hell of a fix. My life would end more useless than it started, leaving my wife and daughter without a single solitary damn thing.
'The other thing that's come up is that I've seen George Rowley. It was one day last week. I may have told you that the lobe of his right ear was gone- he said he had it hacked off in Australia-hut I don't think I really knew him by that. There probably is a mighty good print of his mug in my mind somewhere, and I just simply knew it was him. After twenty-three years! I was out with a survey detail about a mile back of the front trenches, laying out new communication lines, and a big car came along. British. The car stopped. It had four British officers in it, and one of them called to me and I went over and he asked for directions to our division
