ust Company."

"Well, I'll be damnationed!" blurted the big man, with such whole-souled
astonishment that the mode of expression was pardonable. "And I thought
that plenty and enough was happening in this town for one night!"

"Frank, this is Colonel Norman Wincott. He has well understood your case
from what I have told him. Now he will understand better. Colonel, won't
you allow Frank's story to wait? He is in a dreadfully nervous state,
poor chap. And I'm afraid he'll go crazy on our hands if he isn't
enlightened right away about what is going on here to-night."

Colonel Wincott strode across the room and slapped Vaniman cordially on
the shoulder with one hand and pumphandled with the other. "Plenty of
men have escaped from state prison. There's a special novelty about a
story of that sort. But let me tell you that I'm the only man in the
world who has ever put over a proposition such as this one that is on
the docket right here and now. I don't blame you for being interested."
It was plain that the colonel entertained no mean opinion of himself and
his projects. "All is, Vaniman, I hope your making a two-ring affair of
it hasn't taken the attention of the folks off the main show."

"It has only added to the general effect," affirmed the Squire. "It's a
clincher. Folks don't care now because Tasper Britt is awake. He has got
plenty of business of his own to attend to without calling in sheriffs
to slap on attachments."

"Very good! The easier the better," returned Colonel Wincott. "But when
I hired you to look after the law part, Hexter, I reckoned you could
counter every crack he made. Sit down, Vaniman!" He picked up the chair
he had overturned and took it for himself. "You have seen the parade,
some of it?"

"I saw a great deal of it, sir."

"And you don't know where it's headed for?"

"No."

The colonel leaned back and regarded the Squire with the satisfied
contentment of a cat who had tucked away the last morsel of the canary.
Then he winked at Vaniman. "Young man, did you ever hear of Wincott's
Pure Rye?"

"No, sir."

"Glad of it! Hope you never were familiar with any other brands.
However, enough men did know about it in those dear, damp days beyond
recall to make me independent of the pawnshop, to say the least. And,
having cleaned up a good pot with whisky running down men's gullets, I
reckoned I'd see what I could do with water running downhill. Do you get
me at all so far?"

"No, sir."

"D