The Adair County news., 1921-12-20
he'd like to have the smoking room fol-
his nightly shoe-shine, and turned in.
CHAPTER III.
Waits and Strays.


the porter's call the next morning, my
Pullman was standing in the Denver
yard. While 1 was shaving in the
Mushroom 1 asked the colored boy il
nv smoking-rOOm chum of the night
before was up yet.
'Yas. sab; he done been up an gone,
| for the longest"
OF course. this was mere Idle QueS-
| tiOning on my part. Tracing the
brOwn-bearded mining engineer who
had used me as a convenient dumping
! ground for his story was the least of
my intention at the moment For that
matter, since we hadn't exchanged
| cards, and l wasn't even sure thar I'd
| heard his name straight, l couldn't
have traced him if Lad wanted to-
Recalling the story in the gariSh
! light of another day, it seemed bit
less credible than it had while l was
listening to it, and began to wonder
if the teller of it might not be mem
Der of the deathless guild of smoke
| room rOmancerS | buried the story
| among the things to be smiled at ana
| forgotten. when l took taxi for the
hotel. After an excellent breakfast |
made a few inquiries about the meri-
dian: the l05th, that the maps showed
| as passing just west of the city. The
maps were right. The 105th meridian,
which is the one from which mountain
time is reckOned. ran a little west of
the city proper, and. by consequence,
west Of the two other principal cities
of the state, Colorado Springs and
| Pueblo.
l found that the 10th meridian,
tracing it north from Denver stops
short against the 10th parallel of lati-
| tude just south of little town called
Erie. Traced south. it tracks the D.
& r. G. railroad for about twenty
miles and then takes to the mountain.
barely shutting out ManitOu, and pass
) ing, of course, well to the west
ward of Pueblo. This simplified mat
terS-a little
Yet this business of wandering aim
leSSly from post to pillar, cOmbing the
face of nature for blue-eyed maidenS
and piebald horses and harlequin-faced
dogs was already beginning to strike
Inc as about the most fantastic thing a
body could conceive of doing. To at
tempt it without plan of some kind
seemed worse than useless so. for per
hapS the first time in a pretty rattle
Drained life. / sat down to do some
ground-and-lOfty head work, with
Cousin Percy's letter for a sort of
neXuS.
The third paragraph contained the
meat of the matter: "YOur. portion of
Grandfather Jasper's property was
worth. at its latest valuation. some
thing like $44O,OOO." What single piece
Of property outside of a large city
could he worth any such sum as that ?
l could think of nothing but a mine Of
some kind. unless 1t might be cattle
ranch, or a growth of standing timber a;
and in the area laid out for me, mines
would OutvOte cattle or timber about a
hundred to one, thought
Then there was that other phrase
1T lies in a perfectly safe repository.
Repository" implied a recep-
|
wall. or a barbed-wire fence or any in
closing thing you like to imagine. Could
a mine be said to be repository?
As you see, l kept coming back to
the mine idea, in spite of all | could
do; and at last, without a word of
warning, and right out of clear sky
as you may say, smack! thing hit
me Squarely between the shoulder,
b1adeS-BrOwn-bear and his eccentric
old gentleman!
After | got cooled off bit had tC
admit that there was something less
than one chance in a thousand that, al
the price of couple of cigars given t.
fellow traveller in distress, had pur
chased any real clue to my own puzzle
Yet | couldn't get away from the
notion that 1 was on the verge of dis
cUVery. Oddly enough, the miraculous
part of 1.-THE one chance in million
that l should run across the one per
son in hundred million who could tel
: me that particular StOry-didn't i'm
press me at the time. l was too busily
engaged in trying to fit the puzzle
pieces together to think of anything
else at the moment.
Come to sum them up, they fitted as
toundingly well. Grandfather Jaspe
had always been exceedingly close
mouthed when speaking of his invest
ments. Added to that, he would b.
= the last man in the world to have con
l fessed that he had been bitten, even in
directly. by "gOld-brick" game. Then
: too, the course he had pursued wit
i the mining engineer always granting
the truth of BrOwn-beard's story wa
] Just like him he would have wanted
2 year In which to think 1t over-or may
be longer. Also, it was like him t
- keep all the identifying marks a
: carefully hidden as a nut meat in it
Z shell
a At this point began to think abOu
e getting action. One word from Bull
d ton. or Bulletin, or whatever his nam
:, was, would settle the Identities beyon
o question, and that word was his "Ol
I 1 10