The old darky slipped away through the edge of the timber, and Matt, none too sanguine, proceeded to lay a course for the spot where he hoped to be joined by his cowboy chum. CHAPTER VIII. THE COLONEL TRIES PERSUASION. For a few moments McGlory struggled in the grasp of Colonel Billings. He was excited, and angry over the way Matt had been treated, and he would not have hesitated to do the colonel an injury if he could thereby have escaped from the room and followed his pard. “Quiet!” ordered the colonel sternly. “You don’t understand this thing, McGlory, or you wouldn’t be fighting to escape from me. I’m the best friend you ever had, if you only knew it.” “Nary, you ain’t!” panted the cowboy. “My best friend just risked his neck dropping out of the window. You’re trying to get me into trouble, and Pard Matt is trying to keep me out. Take your hands off me, colonel!” “I will, Joe, just as soon as you promise to sit still and hear what I have to say.” McGlory reflected that it was too late to follow Matt, who was probably doing his best to evade Levitt and the others who were hot on his trail. The cowboy reasoned that he could find his chum later, and that there could be no harm in listening to what the colonel had to say. “Go on,” said he curtly. “You’ll stay right where you are until I’m done?” asked the colonel. “Yes.” Billings drew back, dropped into a chair, and laid a friendly hand on the cowboy’s knee. His voice changed, sounding the depths of friendly interest and personal regard. “Joe,” he remarked, “ever since your father took the One-way Trail I’ve sort of felt that I was responsible for your welfare. I knew your father mighty well--better than any one else in Tucson, I reckon--and him and me was bosom friends.” McGlory had no personal knowledge on this point, but he was willing to take the colonel’s word for it. “If I can do anything for Joe,” the colonel went on, “I says to myself that I won’t leave a stone unturned to do it. When the ‘Pauper’s Dream’ proposition came under my management I knew I had the chance I wanted to turn your way. I sold you a hundred shares of the stock at five dollars a share, and we went on to develop the claim.” “And there wasn’t any more gold in the shaft,” spoke up the cowboy dryly, “than there was in a New England well.” “That’s what everybody thought,” returned the colonel, “but I knew better.” He got up, went to the table, and helped himself to a drink from the decanter. “Better have a nip, son, eh?” he asked, as by an afterthought, before leaving the table. “Not for me,” replied McGlory stoutly. “Pard Matt don’t believe in that sort of thing, and I get along better when I make his notions my own. I’ve found that out more than once.” The colonel sighed resignedly, but did not press the point. Returning to his chair, he continued his persuasions.