Jones hit only the high places in reaching me. and meeting me in the hotel lobby, said:
"Puter, what is the matter? I learn that you are going to cut loose and give the whole bunch of us away—is that so?"
"Well," I replied, "you are a nice lot of fellows, particularly Mays, Mitchell, Kribs and yourself, for now that I have been convicted, Mitchell condemns me, while Mays, Kribs and you have seen fit to pass me up in the most deliberate and cold-blooded manner. Both Mays and yourself, being my partners in those timber land schemes for the past eight years, should have been the first to offer me assistance, and which, you well know, should have come to me unsolicited; but you failed to appear, and when I was forced to call personally, because of your non-appearance, I was turned down like a white chip. Up to this time I have never uttered a word to anyone about the fraudulent character of the transactions in which you were all involved with me. On the other hand, I have stuck to you all from beginning to end."
Jones' countenance assumed a look of serious solicitude as he replied: "Be reasonable, Puter, and I will see Mays and Kribs and the rest of them, and between us all, we shall see that your fine is paid!"
"You'll pay nothing!" I answered, heatedly. "I am plenty capable of paying my own fine. I never expected, nor would I permit, anyone to pay my fine. All I asked for and expected was, that Mays, Kribs and yourself would show me the consideration to which I was entitled. I had no other thought than that you would all hasten to my aid, and the only question in my mind, immediately after conviction, was which two of the three I would permit to go on my bond without offending the other. You know, Jones, how badly I was mistaken as to your respective dispositions. I know now what kind of fellows you are, and you will all have to answer at the bar of justice because of your miserable conduct toward me."
Jones beggingly implored, "Don't do it, Steve—don't do it! for if you once start the ball rolling, there is no telling where it will stop! Besides," he continued, with more consideration over the prospective loss of his ill-gotten dollars than contrition for the inevitable wreck of his reputation, "further exposure will simply ruin the timber business, and there won't be a cent in it for anybody hereafter!"
I wheeled abruptly and walked away, for notwithstanding the fact that Jones had turned against me when I most needed his assistance, at the same time. I could not bear to look upon this fine specimen of manhood reduced to misery and shame, and to think, moreover, that he was yet to suffer still greater torture from the grilling he was certain to receive at the hands of the death-dealing Heney. My position, for the moment, was as one "between the devil and the deep sea," for I had no real desire at heart to humiliate my old friend Jones, nor did I wish to place him in the hands of Heney. a man for whom I could entertain no love, for if ever living man prosecuted his fellow-being, it was this man Heney when he kept rapping it to me, and, as I believed at the time, with a determination not only to kill me for eternity, if possible, but. if within his power, to place me behind the very gates of hell.
But I must decide. Once before I had done so, and now it was incumbent upon me to again revolve all the agonies of my chaotic thoughts into some sort of tangible form that would assume the composite shape of justice and mercy. Not in the presence of my one-time friend, however. I must be alone, and in the solitude of my room I reviewed every phase of the situation as one seeks the secrets of destiny in a kaleidoscope.
All the abuses I had suffered at the hands of this syndicate of traitors seemed to parade before me in spectral procession, and mock my very soul itself with their merciless taunts. It was more than human flesh could endure, and lest my heart should grow too weak and cowardly, causing me to flinch from what I realized was my stern duty, I walked deliberately from my own room to that of the Government prosecutor—in the same hotel—and knocked for admission, with
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