Dr. Slavens colored under the question, which came so sharply and indelicately, although he had rehea.r.s.ed in his mind for that moment an uncounted number of times. He said nothing, fumbling as he was for a reply.
Jerry, lying back on his cot in the wagon, his head propped up, laughed shortly and answered for him.
"It was about twenty thousand, wasn"t it, Doctor?"
"Somewhere around there," admitted Slavens, as if confessing some wild folly.
"Well, I said I"d give you half as much as you expected to get out of it if you pulled Jerry through, and I"m here to keep my word," said the Governor, beginning to write.
Agnes looked at the doctor, indignant amazement in her face. Then she turned to the Governor sharply.
"I beg your pardon, Governor Boyle, but I was present when you made that promise; you said you"d pay him _twice_ as much as he hoped to get out of the claim if he saved Jerry"s life," said she.
Governor Boyle raised his eyes with a cold, severe look on his bearded face.
"I beg your pardon!" said he with withering rebuke, which carried with it denial and challenge of proof. That said, he bent to his writing again.
Jerry Boyle laughed.
"Oh, jar loose a little, Governor--be a sport!" he urged.
"Here is my check for ten thousand dollars, Doctor," said the Governor, handing the slip to Slavens; "I consider that pretty good pay for two weeks" work."
The Governor mounted his horse, and gave the driver the word to proceed slowly to the station.
"And if I croak on the road over the Governor"ll stop payment on the check," said Jerry facetiously.
"Well, unless you get busy with that little gun of yours and somebody puts another hole through you on the way," the doctor a.s.sured him, "I"ll make it to the bank door with a perfectly good check in my hand."
Young Boyle held out his hand in farewell, his face suddenly sober and serious.
"The gun has been cached," said he. "I promised mother I"d never sling it on a man again, and I"m going to stick to it. I"m going to get a bill put through the Legislature making it a felony to pack one, if it can be done. I"m cured, Doctor, in more ways than one."
The cavalcade moved off down the winding road. Agnes was ablaze with indignation.
"The idea of that man going back on his solemn word, given in the very presence of death!"
"Never mind; that"s the way he made his money, I suppose," said the doctor. "I"ve got more out of it than I ever expected to get without a row, and I"m going to make a line for that bank in Cheyenne and get the money on his check before he changes his mind. He may get to thinking before he gets home that Jerry isn"t worth ten thousand dollars."
As they rode up to the rise of the hill, Agnes reined in and stopped.
"Here is where we changed places on the coach that day when Smith thought there was going to be a fight," she recalled.
"Yes, this is the place," he said, looking around with a smile. "Old Hun Shanklin was up here spying out the land."
"Smith called you to the box to help him, he told me later, because he picked you out as a man who would put up a fight," said she.
"Well, let us hope that he made a good guess," Slavens said, "for here"s where we take up the racket with the world again."
"We changed places on the coach that day; you took the post of danger,"
she reflected, her eyes roaming the browning hills and coming back to his face with a caress in their placid depths.
"Yes," he said, slowly, gravely; "where a man belongs."
Dr. Slavens gathered up his reins to go, yet lingered a little, looking out over the gray leagues of that vast land unfolded with its new adventures at his feet. Agnes drew near, turned in her saddle to view again the place of desolation strewn over with its monumental stones.
"This is my Gethsemane," she said.
"It was cursed and unholy when I came to it; I leave it sanctified by my most precious memory," said he.
He rode on; Agnes, pressing after, came yet a little way behind, content to have it so, his breast between her and the world. And that was the manner of their going from the place of stones.
EDGAR RICE BURROUGH"S NOVELS
May be had wherever books are sold. Ask for Grossat & Dunlap"s list.
_TARZAN THE UNTAMED_
Tells of Tarzan" s return to the life of the ape-man in his search for vengeance on those who took from him his wife and home.
_JUNGLE TALES OF TARZAN_
Records the many wonderful exploits by which Tarzan proves his right to ape kingship.
_A PRINCESS OF MARS_
Forty-three million miles from the earth--a succession of the weirdest and most astounding adventures in fiction. John Carter, American, finds himself on the planet Mars, battling for a beautiful woman, with the Green Men of Mars, terrible creatures fifteen feet high, mounted on horses like dragons.
_THE G.o.dS OF MARS_
Continuing John Carter"s adventures on the Planet Mars, in which he does battle against the ferocious "plant men," creatures whose mighty tails swished their victims to instant death, and defies Issus, the terrible G.o.ddess of Death, whom all Mars worships and reveres.
_THE WARLORD OF MARS_
Old acquaintances, made in the two other stories, reappear, Tars Tarkas, Tardos Mors and others. There is a happy ending to the story in the union of the Warlord, the t.i.tle conferred upon John Carter, with Dejah Thoris.
_THUVIA, MAID OF MARS_
The fourth volume of the series. The story centers around the adventures of Carthoris, the son of John Carter and Thuvia, daughter of a Martian Emperor.
Grosset & Dunlap, Publishers, New York