Good Men and True; and, Hit the Line Hard/Good Men and True/Chapter 12
Chapter XII
"No, no! the adventures first: explanations take such a dreadful time."
BILLY took up his quarters at the leading hotel and permeated both El Paso and Juarez with much abandon. He wired Cleveland, Ohio, for funds, and Cleveland responded generously, sending him, without delay or demur, a noble wad for the emergency.
George frequented the real-estate section on legitimate, if trivial, pretexts connected with Hibler's business; demanding vacation from that legal luminary on his arrival. Pringle waxed talkative with visiting and resident cowmen, among whom exists a curious freemasonry, informal but highly effective.
Moreover, Pringle disregarded his own explicit instructions. Such cowmen as he knew well—and trusted—began to infest Juarez. Their mere orders—for he gave them no reasons were to watch either Thorpe or Patterson if they visited the Mexican city; also any obnoxiously fat men with whom they should hold conference; and to report progress.
The four friends between them watched Thorpe in all his doings, dogged his footsteps by night and by day—passed him from one to the other like the button in the game—with such vigilance that at the end of the week they had discovered no single thing to their help.
Thorpe loitered through life in sybaritic fashion; rose late, fared sumptuously; gave a little time to the real-estate office in which he was investing partner; more to political conferences. In the afternoons he rode or motored; sometimes he dropped in to the Fire Company's bowling alley instead, combating a certain tendency to corpulence.
For the rest there was dinner at his club; bridge with a select coterie, or perhaps the theater; occasionally, a social function. And the day usually ended with a visit to the big Turkish Baths on Franklin Street, another precaution against fatness. Nothing could be more open and aboveboard than this respectable gentleman's walk and auto.
Patterson's doings were much the same, save that he shunned the little entertainments where the Judge shone with a warm and mellow splendor, and ventured often into that quarter of the town that was Leo's particular care, breaking rather more than his full quota of windows. He made also a brief trip to Silver City, on which occasion Pringle again violated his own orders by sending red-headed Joe Cowan, cowboy, of Organ, as an observer for the G. M. A. T.—to no benefit to the society.
Patterson had gone to look over a mining proposition for a client.
This unavailing search had one curious and unexpected result. Noticing many people closely, perforce, they observed that a surprising number of these had done those things that they really ought not to have done. Also, they kept on doing them; confident that no man saw them: so cunning were they. So that Ballinger gloomily avowed his intention of turning blackmailer, rather than again to appeal to what he was pleased to term the "unremitting kindness" of his family.
Only one thing had occurred so far which the most besotted optimist could interpret as even a possible confirmation of their suspicions.
One night, the fourth of their surveillance, Judge Thorpe took a late street-car for Juarez, foregoing the baths. When he alighted from it, at Calle San Rafael, John Wesley Pringle also left the car on the farther side and walked smartly away.
Thorpe having turned eastward, Pringle came back and trailed along far behind. He dared not follow closely; if Thorpe's suspicions should be aroused it would go hard with Jeff. He preferred to risk losing his man rather than to risk the consequences of an alarm.
And lose him he did. The Judge turned to the left at Terrazas Street. Pringle was just a little too far behind. He made haste to come up, but when he reached the corner the Judge was out of sight; nor could he catch the trail again. And the Judge returned to El Paso without being seen again.
Of the other labors of the four friends during this weary time; of myriad casual questions that came to naught; of unnumbered fat men traced, unsuspecting, to their blameless homes; of hope deferred, disappointments, fastings, vain vigils, and all their acts—behold! are they not written in the book of Lost Endeavor?
•••••
Meanwhile Jeff read many books, he practised his typewriting, he baited Mac mercilessly, he experimented with new dishes procured by that trusty henchman; and day by day he noted in the papers little personals: "Understand situation perfectly that quick move will jeopardize"; "Making haste slowly to come to aid of party, whereabouts unknown sit steady"; and others, variously worded to report no progress, to extol the difficult virtue of patience and to recommend its practice—always with a fragment from one of the catchword sentences for an identification tag. One of them gave no news at all. It read: "Pack my box with five dozen liquor jugs. Practise that for quick movement. Lots of time."
But as John Wesley sagely remarked, "It's a long worm that has no turning." And as he said again, "The end doesn't come till along towards the last."