“No,” said Hal.
“You’re an educated man; you’re no labourer, that I know. Who’s paying you?”
“There you are! You don’t believe in altruism.”
The other blew a ring of smoke across the room. “Just want to put the company in the hole, hey? Some kind of agitator?”
“I am a miner who wants to be a check-weighman.”
“Socialist?”
“That depends upon developments here.”
“Well,” said the marshal, “you’re an intelligent chap, that I can see. So I’ll lay my hand on the table and you can study it. You’re not going to serve as check-weighman in North Valley, nor any other place that the ‘G.F.C.’ has anything to do with. Nor are you going to have the satisfaction of putting the company in a hole. We’re not even going to beat you up and make a martyr of you. I was tempted to do that the other night, but I changed my mind.”
“You might change the bruises on my arm,” suggested Hal, in a pleasant voice.
“We’re going to offer you the choice of two things,” continued the marshal, without heeding this mild sarcasm. “Either you will sign a paper admitting that you took the twenty-five dollars from Alec Stone, in which case we will fire you and call it square; or else we will prove that you took it, in which case we will send you to the pen for five or ten years. Do you get that?”
Now when Hal had applied for the job of check-weighman, he had been expecting to be thrown out of the camp, and had intended to go, counting his education complete. But here, as he sat and gazed into the marshal’s menacing eyes, he decided suddenly that he did not want to leave North Valley. He wanted to stay and take the measure of this gigantic “burglar,” the General Fuel Company.
“That’s a serious threat, Mr. Cotton,” he remarked. “Do you often do things like that?”
“We do them when we have to,” was the reply.
“Well, it’s a novel proposition. Tell me more about it. What will the charge be?”
“I’m not sure about that—we’ll put it up to our lawyers. Maybe they’ll call it conspiracy, maybe blackmail. They’ll make it whatever carries a long enough sentence.”
“And before I enter my plea, would you mind letting me see the letter I’m supposed to have written.”
“Oh, you’ve heard about the letter, have you?” said the camp-marshal, lifting his eyebrows in mild surprise. He took from his desk a sheet of paper and handed it to Hal, who read:
“Dere mister Stone, You don’t need worry about the check-wayman. Pay me twenty five dollars, and I will fix it right. Yours try, Joe Smith.”
Having taken in the words of the letter, Hal examined the paper, and perceived that his enemies had taken the trouble, not merely to forge a letter in his name, but to have it photographed, to have a cut made of the photograph, and to have it printed. Beyond doubt they had distributed it broadcast in the camp. And all this in a few hours! It was as Olson had said—a regular system to keep the men bedevilled.
XIX
Hal took a minute or so to ponder the situation. “Mr. Cotton,” he said, at last. “I know how to spell better than that. Also my handwriting is a bit more fluent.”
There was a trace of a smile about the marshal’s cruel lips. “I know,” he replied. “I’ve not failed to compare them.”
“You have a good secret-service department!” said Hal.
“Before you get through, young fellow, you’ll discover that our legal department is equally efficient.”
“Well,” said Hal, “they’ll need to be; for I don’t see how you can get round the fact that I’m a check-weighman, chosen according to the law, and with a group of the men behind me.”
“If that’s what you’re counting on,” retorted Cotton, “you may as well forget it. You’ve got no group any more.”
“Oh! You’ve got rid of them?”
“We’ve got rid of the ringleaders.”
“Of whom?”
“That old billy-goat, Sikoria, for one.”
“You’ve shipped him?”
“We have.”
“I saw the beginning of that. Where have you sent him?”
“That,” smiled the marshal, “is a job for your secret-service department!”
“And who else?”
“John Edstrom has gone down to bury his wife. It’s not the first time that dough-faced old preacher has made trouble for us, but it’ll be the last. You’ll find him in Pedro—probably in the poorhouse.”
“No,” responded Hal, quickly—and there came just a touch of elation in his voice—“he won’t have to go to the poorhouse at once. You see, I’ve just sent twenty-five dollars to him.”
The camp-marshal frowned. “Really!” Then, after a pause, “You did have that money on you! I thought that lousy Greek had got away with it!”
“No. Your knave was honest. But so was I. I knew Edstrom had been getting short weight for years, so he was the one person with any right to the money.”
This story was untrue, of course; the money was still buried in Edstrom’s cabin. But Hal meant for the old miner to have it in the end, and meantime he wanted to throw Cotton off the track.
“A clever trick, young man!” said the marshal. “But you’ll repent it before you’re through. It only makes me more determined to put you where you can’t do us any harm.”
“You mean in the pen? You understand, of course, it will mean a jury trial. You can get a jury to do what you want?”
“They tell me you’ve been taking an interest in politics in Pedro County. Haven’t you looked into our jury-system?”
“No, I haven’t got that far.”
The marshal began blowing rings of smoke again.
“Well, there are some three hundred men on our jury-list, and we know them all. You’ll find yourself facing a box with Jake Predovich as foreman, three company-clerks, two of Alf Raymond’s saloon-keepers, a ranchman with a mortgage held by the company-bank, and five Mexicans who have no idea what it’s all about, but would stick a knife into your back for a drink of whiskey. The District
