“Oy!” answered a voice some distance away.

“That you, Pete?” called the engineer.

“Yep.”

“Then close in here.  I have doings for you.”

Tom Reade should have stepped out into sight.  He was neither spy nor eavesdropper.  For once, something within urged him to keep out of sight and silent.

“Where be you, pardner?” called Pete’s voice, nearer at hand now.

“Right here, Pete,” called Black.

“What do you want, pardner?” demanded the bad man, coming through the brush.

“Lend me a couple of hundred dollars, Pete,” laughed ’Gene Black.

“Did you call me here for any such fool talk as that?” scowled Pete.

“No,” Black admitted.  “Pete, I don’t believe you have two hundred dollars.  But you’d like to have.  Now, wouldn’t you!”

“Two hundred silver bricks,” retorted Bad Pete, his eyes gleaming, “is the price of shooting up a whole town.  Pardner, just get me an extra box of cartridges and lead me to that town!  But have you got the money?”

“Yes,” laughed Black, holding up a roll of greenbacks.  “This and more, too!”

Bad Pete surveyed the money hungrily.

“Some men who know me,” he muttered thickly, “would be afraid to show me a whole bankful of money when there was no one else looking.”

“I’m not afraid of you, Pete,” replied Black quietly.  “You might shoot me, if you felt you could get away with it.  Do you notice that my left hand is in my pocket!  I’m a left-handed shooter, you see.”

Pete glanced covertly at that bulging left trousers’ pocket of the engineer.

“You won’t have to do anything like that to get the money, Pete.  Save your cartridges for other people.  There, I’ve let go of my gun.  Come close and listen to what I have to say—–­but only in your ear.”

There followed some moments of whisperings Try as he would, Reade could not make out a word of what was being said until at last Bad Pete muttered audibly, in a low, hoarse voice: 

“You’re not doing that on your own account, Black?”

“No, Pete; I’m not.”

“Then you must really be working for the road that wants to steal the charter away—–­the W.C. & A.?”

“Perhaps so, Pete.  You don’t need to know that.  All you have to know is what I want done.  I’m a business man, Pete, and money is the soul of business.  Here!”

Black peeled some banknotes from his roll.

“Ten twenties, Pete.  That makes the two hundred I was talking to you about.  Understand, man, that isn’t your pay.  That’s simply your expense money, for you to spend while you’re hanging about.  Stick to me, do things just as I want them done, and your pay will run several times as high as your expense money.”

“Do you know how long I’ve been looking for this sort o’ thing, pardner?” Pete inquired huskily.

“No; of course not,” rejoined ’Gene Black rather impatiently.