We'll be out of here in
a minute, then you show me the best place in town and we'll have a
decent meal, just we two, the way we used to. I'll pay the bill.
God Almighty! I've missed you, Buster."
"Wait, dad." Kirk was smiling, but his heart ached at his father's
emotion. "I'm a jail-bird, you know. They think I--killed a
fellow. But I don't care much what they think now."
"That's all over," Clifford broke in. "We've squared that, and
you'll be discharged in ten minutes."
"Honest?"
"Certainly," said the old gentleman. "Cortlandt shot himself.
Anybody but a blithering Spanish ass would have known it at the
start. We have a letter he wrote to his wife an hour before he did
it. She just found it and turned it over. She left here a moment
ago, by-the-way, all broken up. She's a great woman, Kirk. That's
not all, either. Clifford followed you that night, and knows you
didn't go near Cortlandt. Oh, you should have seen 'em jump when
we flashed it on 'em all at once and they learned who I was!"
"But those men who swore they saw me?"
"Bah! We've got that little Dago with the mustache, and both his
witnesses. If they don't send him up, I'll run in a shipload of my
brakemen, and we'll push this Isthmus overboard and him with it.
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