seems to me you travel
purty light. About how much did you think you'd get done fur all this
pile of wealth?"

"You will be well paid," said Mr. Trimm, arguing hard; "my friend will
see to that. What I want you to do is to take the money you have there
in your hand and buy a cold chisel or a file--any tools that will cut
these things off me. And then you will send a telegram to a certain
gentleman in New York. And let me stay with you until we get an
answer--until he comes here. He will pay you well; I promise it."

He halted, his eyes and his mind again on the bubbling stuff in the
rusted washboiler. The freckled vagrant studied him through his
red-lidded eyes, kicking some loose embers back into the fire with his
toe.

"I've heard a lot about you one way an' another, Trimm," he said.
"'Tain't as if you wuz some pore down-an'-out devil tryin' to beat the
cops out of doin' his bit in stir. You're the way-up, high-an'-mighty
kind of crook. An' from wot I've read an' heard about you, you never
toted fair with nobody yet. There wuz that young feller, wot's his
name?--the cashier--him that wuz tried with you. He went along with you
in yore games an' done yore work fur you an' you let him go over the
road to the same place you're tryin' to dodge now. Besides," he added
cunningly, "you come here talkin' mighty big about money, yet I notice
you ain't carryin' much of it in yore clothes. All I've had to go by is
yore word. An' yore word ain't worth much, by all accounts."

"I tell you, man, that you'll profit richly," burst out Mr. Trimm, the
words falling over each other in his new panic. "You must help me; I've
endured too much--I've gone through too much to give up now." He pleaded
fast, his hands shaking in a quiver of fear and eagerness as he
stretched them out in entreaty and his linked chain shaking with them.
Promises, pledges, commands, orders, arguments poured from him. His
tormentor checked him with a gesture.

"You're wot I'd call a bird in the hand," he chuckled, hugging his slack
frame, "an' it ain't fur you to be givin' orders--it's fur me. An',
anyway, I guess we ain't a-goin' to be able to make a trade--leastwise
not on yore terms. But we'll do business all right, all right--anyhow, I
will."

"What do you mean?" panted Mr. Trimm, full of terror. "You'll help me?"

"I mean this," said the tramp slowly. He put his hands under his
loose-hanging overcoat and began to fumble at a leather strap about his
wai