The Wreckers

tan Ca

dent began on me, and his voice took me straight back to the Oregon woods a

ain that night, now that it was so late. Instead of going away and giving it up, he sat right still, bo

ny," he grated, after a minute or two. "Y

it, and h

u here with him from

as coming next. When it did

are you ge

f his business. But the second thought (which isn't always as good as it's said to be) whisper

a good bit more than that," he growled. "They tell me you ar

straight then. "No

y not f

that he was actually trying to buy me that I couldn't see anything but red, and I blur

eyebrows, and his hard mouth was drawn into a straight line wi

said, "You're only a boy. You want

do: what then

est you ever had. You don't owe Norcro

be n

can do for you in a better field than railroading ever was, or ever will be. It'll

he was trying to fix the witness. It's funny, but the only thing I thought of, just then, was the necessity of covering up

n't told the sheriff, or anybody but Mr. Norcross, what I know about a certain little train hold-up

s pocket, and lighted it. If I had had the sense of a field mouse, I might have know

know how you and Norcross came to get in on it; the joke was meant to be on John Chadwick. The night before, at a little dinner we were giving him at the railroad club, he said there never was

he only reasonable play-was to let him go away thinking that he had made m

n't take it as a

dig a hole and bury the thing decently. Perhaps we had all

ize and kicked the whole k

rom Mr. Norcross is another. The woods are full of good shorthand men, Mr. Hatch, but for the pre

d of the railroad collar, if you felt like it. And there'll be no court and no subp[oe]na. The poorest jack-leg lawyer we've got in Portal City would make a fool of you in five minut

completely lost to any sober weighing and measuring of the possible consequences.

ssed between you and Mr. Henckel that Monday morning in the Bullard lobby. As I say, I haven't told anybody yet but Mr.

big a fool I had made of myself. But I was still mad clear through at the idea that he had taken me for the other kind of a fool-the kind that wouldn't know en

d the two telegrams, and the fact that I'd have to go and stick the three-bladed knife into Mr. Norcross. When I did r

door that served for the stair-case entrance from the street. When I had felt around and found the brass knob, something happened, I didn't know just what. In the tiny little fraction of a s