第53章

Your past-due paper is moderate in amount, and promises only a small loss.I would recommend the calling in of your large loans, and the making of only sixty and ninety day or call loans until general business revives.And now, there is one thing more, and I will have finished with the bank.Here are six notes aggregating something like $40,000.They are secured, according to their faces, by various stocks, bonds, shares, etc.to the value of $70,000.Those securities are missing from the notes to which they should be attached.I suppose you have them in the safe or vault.You will permit me to examine them."

Major Tom's light-blue eyes turned unflinchingly toward the examiner.

"No, sir," he said, in a low but steady tone; "those securities are neither in the safe nor in the vault.I have taken them.You may hold me personally responsible for their absence."

Nettlewick felt a slight thrill.He had not expected this.He had struck a momentous trail when the hunt was drawing to a close.

"Ah!" said the examiner.He waited a moment, and then continued: "May I ask you to explain more definitely?"

"The securities were taken by me," repeated the major."It was not for my own use, but to save an old friend in trouble.Come in here, sir, and we'll talk it over."

He led the examiner into the bank's private office at the rear, and closed the door.There was a desk, and a table, and half-a-dozen leather-covered chairs.On the wall was the mounted head of a Texas steer with horns five feet from tip to tip.Opposite hung the major's old cavalry saber that he had carried at Shiloh and Fort Pillow.

Placing a chair for Nettlewick, the major seated himself by the window, from which he could see the post-office and the carved limestone front of the Stockmen's National.He did not speak at once, and Nettlewick felt, perhaps, that the ice could be broken by something so near its own temperature as the voice of official warning.

"Your statement," he began, "since you have failed to modify it, amounts, as you must know, to a very serious thing.You are aware, also, of what my duty must compel me to do.I shall have to go before the United States Commissioner and make--"

"I know, I know," said Major Tom, with a wave of his hand."You don't suppose I'd run a bank without being posted on national banking laws and the revised statutes! Do your duty.I'm not asking any favours.

But, I spoke of my friend.I did want you to hear me tell you about Bob."

Nettlewick settled himself in his chair.There would be no leaving San Rosario for him that day.He would have to telegraph to the Comptroller of the Currency; he would have to swear out a warrant before the United States Commissioner for the arrest of Major Kingman;

perhaps he would be ordered to close the bank on account of the loss of the securities.It was not the first crime the examiner had unearthed.Once or twice the terrible upheaval of human emotions that his investigations had loosed had almost caused a ripple in his official calm.He had seen bank men kneel and plead and cry like women for a chance--an hour's time--the overlooking of a single error.One cashier had shot himself at his desk before him.None of them had taken it with the dignity and coolness of this stern old Westerner.

Nettlewick felt that he owed it to him at least to listen if he wished to talk.With his elbow on the arm of his chair, and his square chin resting upon the fingers of his right hand, the bank examiner waited to hear the confession of the president of the First National Bank of San Rosario.

"When a man's your friend," began Major Tom, somewhat didactically, "for forty years, and tried by water, fire, earth, and cyclones, when you can do him a little favour you feel like doing it."

("Embezzle for him $70,000 worth of securities," thought the examiner.)

"We were cowboys together, Bob and I," continued the major, speaking slowly, and deliberately, and musingly, as if his thoughts were rather with the past than the critical present, "and we prospected together for gold and silver over Arizona, New Mexico, and a good part of California.We were both in the war of 'sixty-one, but in different commands.We've fought Indians and horse-thieves side by side; we've starved for weeks in a cabin in the Arizona mountains, buried twenty feet deep in snow; we've ridden herd together when the wind blew so hard the lightning couldn't strike--well, Bob and I have been through some rough spells since the first time we met in the branding camp of the old Anchor-Bar ranch.And during that time we've found it necessary more than once to help each other out of tight places.In those days it was expected of a man to stick to his friend, and he didn't ask any credit for it.Probably next day you'd need him to get at your back and help stand off a band of Apaches, or put a tourniquet on your leg above a rattlesnake bite and ride for whisky.So, after all, it was give and take, and if you didn't stand square with your pardner, why, you might be shy one when you needed him.But Bob was a man who was willing to go further than that.He never played a limit.

"Twenty years ago I was sheriff of this country, and I made Bob my chief deputy.That was before the boom in cattle when we both made our stake.I was sheriff and collector, and it was a big thing for me then.I was married, and we had a boy and a girl--a four and a six year old.There was a comfortable house next to the courthouse, furnished by the county, rent free, and I was saving some money.Bob did most of the office work.Both of us had seen rough times and plenty of rustling and danger, and I tell you it was great to hear the rain and the sleet dashing against the windows of nights, and be warm and safe and comfortable, and know you could get up in the morning and be shaved and have folks call you 'mister.' And then, I had the finest wife and kids that ever struck the range, and my old friend with me enjoying the first fruits of prosperity and white shirts, and I guess I was happy.Yes, I was happy about that time."