The Caldwell tribune. [volume] (Caldwell, Idaho Territory [Idaho]) 1883-1928, 1913-01-03
THE Caldwell. TR|bUNE'S
WEEKLY SHORT STORY

Cataract Of the Nile by this time, or
somewhere else where the comeback
papers don't go. wish all the Am
,erican cops, high and low, would join
the Salvation Army and work off their
exuberance by exercising with tam
bourinesw
ITO this the Consul appended some
language, while | read the circular
which accorded strangely with the
sterling beauties of his actual charac-
ter.
The picture at the top of the police
circular was that of an elderly State
Treasurer who, when he had hurried
away from his state capital about FIVE
weeks before, had, according to the
circular. left a visible yawn in the
vaults of the treasury that the expert
accountants had measured to mean
approximately half million. Of that
measurable sum he had carried away
with him, upon his hasty departure,
just few little thousands that would
enable him to move around. 1t was
one of those cases where State
Treasurer, in order to retain his clasp
upon a needed job, has been bullied
into dishing out the states money to
freshly organized repositories con-
trolled by gangsters of his optical
party. When the press of the vile
opposition had scented the unfragrant
mouse and had barked at the heels
of the Treasurer, demanding that he
instantly recall these funds and re-
store them to the treasurery, the
Treasurer, stampeded, had tried un-
availingly to do that same. But his
over-lords of the gang refused to let
go even to save him. The experts
were turned loose upon his books.
Then there were two things for
the Treasurer to do,-squeal on the
gang, or put on his marathon moe
casins. He wouldn't squeal, and he
was good deal scared, anyhow; and
so he bolted. His entire previous life
had been as honest as the day. He
was simply the too good-natured vic
tim ofsa political gang to whom he
owed his poorly paid political posi-
ton There was no real dishonesty
about him.
"He had taken his elderly wife with
him. When we read the circular they
had been absent from their state capt.
tai for five weeks 1t was known that
the Treasurer's wife had taken with
her a shivery little Mexican hairless
dog, that had been the playmate of
one of her dead daughters. The police
circular told about that. Now, Next
can hairless dogs are about an un-
common in the United States, or any
where else out of Mexico, as mar
mosets Still, this on-his-way non
squealful old Treasurer, accompanied
by half invalid wife, who carried
with her a watery-eyed little Mexican
hairless dog, had baffled the sleuthing
genius of the United States, and may
be some other lands, besides, for five
long weeks. 1t was not what you
might call shining showing for these
aforementioned folk -
But, somehow, as l read the Cir
cular, and remembered what | had
seen of the case in the American news
papers that had sifted along to Vera
Cruz, ! was sort of glad that the
State Treasurer was making good his
getaway, | am not, | hope, a person
of loose ethics; but l have an incur
ably soft spot for men who. when the
tweak comes, refuse to screen their
pelts by squealing even on the people
who have driven him into the morass.
II was suffused with these cogita-
tons, when, leaving the Consul's office
| drifted down to the pier to watch
the debarkation of the passengers,
mostly winter tourists, from the
weekly steamer from New York and
West Indian way ports. L was suf-
fused little more when, among the
earliest of the passengers to descend
the gangplank of the steamer, were
the State Treasurer and his pallid, i'll
looking wife. The Treasurer, albeit a
little more lined under the eyes, ans
wered to his police circular as if it had
been a snapshot taken on the steamer
the day before. And, tucked in the
sleeve of his sad-eyed wife's loose
pongee steamer coat, was the aged
little hairless dog, with his fixed, sus-
picious eyes that looked like a pair of
black hat-pins immersed in perman-
ent dew, and his snuffles and wheezes
him by his rheumatism
THE furtiveness of five weeks of
lodging, preceded by perhaps five
years of mental misery, was in the
mans eyes. He wasn't hangdog. but
just YEARLY watchful. His tiredly
wary way of glancing at the faces of
the people on that Vera Cruz wharf
somehow reminded me of the way the
hairless dog viewed them There was
the same sort of clinging detachment
If you get that paradox, in the ex-
pfessions of both of them. His wife
was crumplcd old lace and lavender.
with the thoroughbred points every
where visible. even in her obvious in
validism. II was pair of adrift, cir
cumstanee-c lutched elderly folk, that
you'd have felt sorry for had you
known only part OF the circumstances.
That's the appeal that. they made
to me, the only person on that dock
to recognize them; and the consdera-
ton that the man had been marooned
by the people he had supposed to be
his friends. and that in the face of this
he had refused to whimper and exude
the story of their treachery that would
have helped if not cleared him, made
me regret little that he and his had
pulled up in port of country that
had an extradition treaty with the
United States. love the law, you
understand. and if it's not a gusty
h.