When Egypt Went Broke Part 35

When Wagg had driven along far enough so that the native could not overhear, he hailed Vaniman through the trap in the top of the van.

"Did you hear that?"

"Yes."

"Is that Devilbrow within grabbing distance of what we're after?"

Vaniman returned a hearty affirmative. He had been able to see those craggy heights from his window in Britt Block. The thought that what he wanted to grab and what Mr. Wagg wanted to grab were not exactly mated as desired objects did not shade his candor when he a.s.serted that Devilbrow was just the place from which to operate.

"All right!" chirruped Wagg. "Us for it!" He displayed the first cheeriness he had shown on the trip. He whistled for a time. Then he sang, over and over, to a tune of his own, "Up above the world so high, like a di'mond in the sky." This display of Wagg's hopeful belief that the fifty-fifty settlement was near at hand served to increase Vaniman's despondency.

Obeying the native's instructions as to the route, Wagg soon turned off the highway and drove along a rutted lane which whiplashed a slope that continually became steeper. Soon he pulled up and told Vaniman to get out and walk and ease the load on the horse. Wagg got down and walked, too.

The trail up Devilbrow was on the side away from the village of Egypt.

The way was through hard growth. There were no houses--no sign of a human being. Wagg's cheerfulness increased. And he said something which put a glimmer of cheer into Vaniman's dark ponderings.

"There's no call to hurry the thing overmuch. If I recuperate too sudden and show up back home it might look funny, after the way I bellowed about my condition. There's plenty of flour, bacon, and canned stuff in that van. I reckon we'd better get our feet well settled here and make sure that n.o.body is watching us; the money is safer in the hole than with us, for the time being. My pay is going on and the future looks rosy."

A c.o.c.k partridge rose from the side of the lane and whirred away through the beech leaves that the first frost of early autumn had yellowed.

"And I've got a shotgun and plenty of sh.e.l.ls! Son, let's forget that we have ever been in state prison. In the course of time that place is about as wearing on a guard as it is on a convict."

The log camp was behind a spur of the rocky summit and was hidden from the village below. Wagg commented with satisfaction on the location when they had reached the place. The van had been concealed in a ravine which led from the lane. The work of loading the horse with the sacked supplies, and the ascent of the mountain, had consumed hours. Twilight was sifting into the valleys by the time they had unloaded the stuff and stabled the horse in a lean-to.

There was a stove in the camp, and the place was furnished after a fas.h.i.+on with chairs and a table fas.h.i.+oned from birch saplings. The blankets of Wagg's camp equipment made the bunks comfortable.

Wagg had been the cook as well as the captain of the expedition. He did better that evening with the wood-burning stove than he had done with the oil stove of his kit.

After supper, before he turned in, Vaniman went out on a spur of Devilbrow and gazed down on the scattered lights of the village of Egypt. As best he could he determined the location of the Harnden house.

He felt as helplessly aloof as if he were a shade revisiting the scene of his mortal experiences.

CHAPTER XXV

THE FIRST PEEP BEHIND THE CURTAIN

The next day Wagg went out and shot two partridges and contrived a stew which fully occupied his attention in the making and the eating. He had suggested to Vaniman that he'd better come along on the expedition after the birds. Vaniman found a bit more than mere suggestion in Wagg's manner of invitation. With his shotgun in the hook of his arm he presented his wonted appearance as the guard at the prison. It was perfectly apparent that Mr. Wagg proposed to keep his eye on the promiser of the fifty-fifty split. But Wagg did not refer to the matter of the money while they strolled in the woods.

As a matter of fact, days went by without the question coming up.

Wagg had previously praised himself as a patient waiter; the young man confessed in his thoughts that his guardian merited the commendation.

Wagg was plainly having a particularly good time on this outing. He displayed the contentment of a man who had ceased to worry about the future; he was taking it easy, like a vacationer with plenty of money in the bank. On one occasion he did mention the money in the course of a bit of philosophizing on the situation:

"I suppose that, when you look at it straight, it's stealing, what I'm doing. I've seen a lot of big gents pa.s.s through that state prison, serving sentences for stealing. Embezzlement, forgery, crooked stock dealing--it's all stealing. They were tempted. I've been tempted. I've fell. I ain't an angel, any more than those big gents were. And you know what I told you about mourners chirking up, after the first blow!

I figure it's the same way in the bank case. They have given up the idea of getting the money back. They're still sad when they think about it, but they keep thinking less and less every day. They've crossed it off, as you might say."

The two who were bound in that peculiar comrades.h.i.+p were out on the crag where they could look down upon the distant checker board of the village. Vaniman, in the stress of the circ.u.mstances, wondered whether he might be able to come at Wagg on the sentimental side of his nature.

"The little town must have gone completely broke since the bank failure.

Innocent people are suffering. If that money could be returned--"

He did not finish the sentence. Mr. Wagg was most distinctly not encouraging that line of talk.

"Look here, Vaniman, when you got away with that money you had hardened yourself up to the point where you were thinking of your own self first, hadn't you?"

The young man did not dare to burst out with the truth--not while Wagg was in the mood his expression hinted at.

Wagg continued: "Well, I've got myself to the point where I'm thinking of my own self. I'm as hard as this rock I'm sitting on." In his emphasis on that a.s.sertion Wagg scarred his knuckles against the ledge.

"After all the work I've had in getting myself to that point, I'm proposing to stay there. If you try to soften me I shall consider that you're welching on your trade."

Wagg made the declaration in loud tones. After all his years of soft-shoeing and repression in a prison, the veteran guard was taking full advantage of the wide expanses of the big outdoors.

"What did I do for you, Vaniman? I let you cash in on a play that I had planned ever since the first barrow of dirt was dumped into that pit.

There's a lifer in that prison with rich relatives. I reckon they would have come across with at least ten thousand dollars. There's a manslaughter chap who owns four big apartment houses. But I picked you because I could sympathize with you on account of your mother and that girl the papers said so much about. It's a job that can't be done over again, not even for the Apostle Peter. Now will you even hint at welching?"

"Certainly not!"

But that affirmation did not come from Vaniman. It was made in his behalf by a duet of voices, ba.s.s and nasal tenor, speaking loudly and confidently behind the two men who were sitting on the ledge.

The younger man leaped to his feet and whirled; the older man struggled partly upright and ground his knees on the ledge when he turned to inspect the terrifying source of sound.

So far as Vaniman's recollection went, they were strangers. One was short and dumpy, the other was tall and thin. They wore slouchy, wrinkled, cheap suits. There was no hint of threat in their faces. On the contrary, both of the men displayed expressions of mingled triumph and mischief. Then, as if they had a mutual understanding in the matter of procedure, they went through a sort of drill. They stuck their right arms straight out; they crooked the arms at the elbows; they drove their hands at their hip pockets and produced, each of them, a bulldog revolver; they snapped their arms into position of quick aim.

Wagg threw up his hands and began to beg. Vaniman held himself under better control.

But the men did not shoot. They returned the guns to their pockets and saluted in military fas.h.i.+on, whacking their palms violently against their thighs in finis.h.i.+ng salute.

"Present!" they cried. Then the dumpy man grinned. Wagg had been goggling, trying to resolve his wild incredulity into certainty. That grin settled the thing for him. It was the same sort of a suggestive grin that he had viewed on that day of days in the prison yard.

"Number Two-Eight-Two!" he quavered.

"Sure thing!" The dumpy man patted the tall man's arm. "Add one, and you have Number Two-Eight-Three--a pal who drew the next number because we're always in company."

"And we're here because we're here," stated the other.

The short man fixed his gaze on the ex-cas.h.i.+er. "You don't realize it yet, but this is more of a reunion than it looks to be on the surface.

You two gents have seen how we're fixed in the gun line, and we hope the understanding is going to make the party sociable."

"You may be thinking that this is only another case of it being proved how small the world is, after all," remarked the tall man. "Not so! Not so! We have followed you two because we have important business with you. We have had a lot of trouble and effort in getting here. Bear that in mind, please!"

The new arrivals were quite matter-of-fact and Wagg was helped to recover some of his composure. "The two of you are three-year men--robbery in the nighttime," he declared, out of his official knowledge. "What in blue blazes are you doing outside the pen?"

"Attending to the same business as you are--after a slice of the bank coin," replied the short man, carelessly.

Wagg got to his feet and banged his fists together. "Do you dare to walk right up to a guard of the state prison and--and--" He balked in his demand for information; Mr. Wagg was plainly afflicted with a few uncomfortable considerations of his own situation.

"We do!" the convicts declared in concert. Then the dumpy man went on: "And whatever else it is you're wondering whether we dare to do, we'll inform that we dare. Once on a time we had occasion to express our opinion of a bank. I wrote out that opinion and left it where it would be seen. Not exactly Sunday-school language, but it hit the case." He turned away from Vaniman's frenzy of gasping interrogation. He confined his attention to Wagg. "A prison guard, say you? You're a h.e.l.l of a guard!"