"Dang me, look at the little runt change hosses! If he does that, no
wonder they can run all day!" Slivers cried as Jim Allen, without
stopping the machinelike gallop of his horses, lightly sprang from
Honeyboy to Princess.
The black pulled abreast of the grays.
"Dang yuh, Jim, don't yuh go tearin' into town by your lonesome," Jack
stormed.
"Get that elephant of yorn goin' then," Jim taunted.
Side by side, they raced on for another mile or two, then Jack felt his
black commence to falter, and Princess shot ahead with Honeyboy
pounding along behind her.
"No, yuh don't!" Jack cried with a laugh.
And when Honeyboy came abreast of him, he leaned forward, grasped the
gray's mane, and swung to his back. Jim saw him and grinned joyfully.
"All right, we'll bust into town like we usta afore yuh was a famous
man an' me a disreputable character," he cried.
Side by side, they thundered into town. As they raced down the street,
Jim Allen spotted the twins coming slowly from the hotel. Miser
Jimpson's house was almost directly opposite the livery stable, and so,
when Jack flung himself from Honeyboy and hastily ran up the path to
the house, Jim quietly turned into the livery yard and waited for the
twins.
Jack Allen threw open the door and entered old Miser Jimpson's. He
found several people there. Dot Reed was sitting at a table with a
paper in her hand. W. A. Raine was standing beside her. On the opposite
side of the table sat old Miser, while behind him Spur Treadwell
towered above One-wing McCann.
They all turned and stared at the dusty, bewhiskered little man who
entered so unceremoniously. Spur marked his two low-hung guns and
longed for the presence of the twins.
"Who are yuh?" old Miser squealed.
"Me--I'm Jack-twin Allen."
"I've heard of you, Mr. Allen. You did some work for my bank once,"
Raine said.
"Is my word good?" Allen asked.
"I would take it," Raine replied promptly.
"Then, Miss Reed, yuh can believe me when I say yuh don't have to sign
that paper," he said, smiling at the girl.
She flushed and looked in bewilderment from one face to the other.
"I don't understand! Every one--Mr. Raine, dad's old friend, the
doctor--every one says I must sign or lose everything!"
Spur Treadwell cocked his ears and listened for the coming of the
McGill twins. He saw that old Miser Jimpson had grown pale, that
One-wing was fidgeting. All knew that the end had come for them, unless
they could stop this man's tongue or have the twins stop it for them.
Briefly Jack Allen sketched how Jim Allen had returned with Slivers
Hart to help him clear his name, how little by little they had pieced
various clews together. Then he went on to the events of that day and
of what Boston Jack had told him.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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