“Shuah Ah can!” replied the old negro promptly. “What kin’ ob a lookin’ fellah is dat ’ar Joe McGlory?”
Matt described his chum’s appearance, and the darky listened closely.
“Find out,” Matt finished, “whether McGlory is still upstairs in the clubhouse. If he is I don’t suppose you can communicate with him, for you will have to do it privately. Providing you can get word to him, tell him to meet me in the grove at the roadside, a quarter of a mile north of the clubhouse. Got that?”
“If you can’t get word to McGlory inside of an hour, then you come and tell me, will you?”
“Yo’ knows, Marse Matt, yo’ can count on Uncle Tom. Ah’ll do whut yo’ say, en Ah’ll wo’k mah ole haid off mascottin’ fo’ yo’ while Ah’m doin’ it.”
The old darky slipped away through the edge of the timber, and Matt, none too sanguine, proceeded to lay a course for the spot where he hoped to be joined by his cowboy chum.
CHAPTER VIII. THE COLONEL TRIES PERSUASION.
For a few moments McGlory struggled in the grasp of Colonel Billings. He was excited, and angry over the way Matt had been treated, and he would not have hesitated to do the colonel an injury if he could thereby have escaped from the room and followed his pard.
“Quiet!” ordered the colonel sternly. “You don’t understand this thing, McGlory, or you wouldn’t be fighting to escape from me. I’m the best friend you ever had, if you only knew it.”
“Nary, you ain’t!” panted the cowboy. “My best friend just risked his neck dropping out of the window. You’re trying to get me into trouble, and Pard Matt is trying to keep me out. Take your hands off me, colonel!”
“I will, Joe, just as soon as you promise to sit still and hear what I have to say.”
McGlory reflected that it was too late to follow Matt, who was probably doing his best to evade Levitt and the others who were hot on his trail. The cowboy reasoned that he could find his chum later, and that there could be no harm in listening to what the colonel had to say.
“You’ll stay right where you are until I’m done?” asked the colonel.
Billings drew back, dropped into a chair, and laid a friendly hand on the cowboy’s knee. His voice changed, sounding the depths of friendly interest and personal regard.
“Joe,” he remarked, “ever since your father took the One-way Trail I’ve sort of felt that I was responsible for your welfare. I knew your father mighty well--better than any one else in Tucson, I reckon--and him and me was bosom friends.”