Perhaps it was that I was in trouble myself that day; my
biggest "deal" of the season had been scented by the officers and
the chances were they would come on and seize the five barrels
of whiskey I had been as many weeks smuggling into the Reserve.
However it was, I put my hand on his shoulder, and told him to
brace up, asking at the same time what was wrong.
"Money," he answered, looking up with kind of haggard eyes. "Dan, I
must have money. City bills, college debts--everything has rolled
up against me. I daren't tell the governor, and he couldn't help me
anyway, and I can't go back for another term owing every man in my
class." He looked suicidal. And then I made the plunge I'd been
thinking on all day.
"Would a hundred dollars be any good to you?" I eyed him hard as I
said it, and sat down in my usual place, opposite him.
"Good?" he exclaimed, half rising. "It would be an eternal
godsend." His foxy eyes glittered. I thought I detected greed in
them; perhaps it was only relief.
I told him it was his if he would only help me, and making sure we
were quite alone, I ran off a hurried account of my "deal," then
proposed that he should "accidentally" meet the officers near the
border, ring in with them as a parson would be likely to do, tell
them he suspicioned the whiskey was directly at the opposite side
of the Reserve to where I really had stored it, get them wild-goose
chasing miles away, and give me a chance to clear the stuff and
myself as well; in addition to the hundred I would give him twenty
per cent.
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