n?" he asked after a moment.

"Before I tell you, I'm going to give you a few pointers on what you're
up against. I don't know how much you know about Old Man Hooper, but
I'll bet there's plenty you _don't_ know about."

I proceeded to tell him something of the old man's methods, from the
"boomerang" to vicarious murder.

"And he gets away with it?" asked Brower when I had finished.

"He certainly does," said I. "Now," I continued, "you may be solid as a
brick church, and your plans may be water-tight, and old Hooper may
kill the fatted four-year-old, for all I know. But if I were you, I
wouldn't go sasshaying all alone out to Hooper's ranch. It's altogether
_too_ blame confiding and innocent."

"If anything happens to me, I've left directions for those contracts to
be recorded," he pointed out. "Old Hooper knows that."

"Oh, sure!" I replied, "just like that! But one day your trustworthy
friend back yonder will get a letter in your well-known hand-write that
will say that all is well and the goose hangs high, that the old man is
a prince and has come through, and that in accordance with the nice,
friendly agreement you have reached he--your friend--will hand over the
contract to a very respectable lawyer herein named, and so forth and so
on, ending with your equally well-known John Hancock."

"Well, that's all right."

"I hadn't finished the picture. In the meantime, you will be getting out
of it just one good swift kick, and that is all."

"I shouldn't write any such letter. Not 'till I felt the feel of the
dough."

"Not at first you wouldn't," I said, softly. "Certainly not at first.
But after a while you would. These renegade Mexicans--like Hooper's
Ramon, for example--know a lot of rotten little tricks. They drive
pitch-pine splinters into your legs and set fire to them, for one thing.
Or make small cuts in you with a knife, and load them up with powder
squibs in oiled paper--so the blood won't wet them--and touch them off.
And so on. When you've been shown about ten per cent, of what old Ramon
knows about such things, you'll write most any kind of a letter."

"My God!" he muttered, thrusting the ridiculous derby to the back of his
head.

"So you see you'd look sweet walking trustfully into Hooper's claws.
That's what that newspaper ad was meant for. And when the respectable
lawyer wrote that the contract had been delivered, do you know what
would happen to you?"

The ex-jockey shuddered.

"But yo