Tom Outland's Story
I was terribly disappointed when I got off the
train at Tarpin and Roddy wasn’t at the station to
meet me.
It was late in the afternoon, almost dark,
and I went straight to the livery stable to ask Bill Hook for news of Blake.
Hook, you remember, had done all our hauling for us, and had been a good friend.
He gave me a glad hand and said Blake was out on the mesa.
“I expect maybe he’s had his feelings hurt here. He’s been shy of this town lately. You see, Tom, folks weren’t bothered none about that mesa so long as you fellows were playing Robinson Crusoe out there, digging up curios. But when it leaked out that Blake had got a lot of money for your stuff, then they begun to feel jealous—said them ruins didn’t belong to Blake any more than to anybody else. It’ll blow over in time; people are always like that when money changes hands. But right now there’s a good deal of bad feeling.”
I told him I didn’t know what he was talking about.
“You mean you ain’t heard about the German, Fechtig? Well, Rodney’s got some surprise waiting for you! Why, he’s had the damnedest luck! He’s cleaned up a neat little pile on your stuff.”
I begged him to tell me what stuff he meant.
“Why, your curios. This German, Fechtig, come along; he’d been buying up a lot of Indian things out here, and he bought your whole outfit
—237—
