The City of Fire - Page 23/221

"Now, keep on yer shirt, Pat, and don't make no outcry. My friends can

get here's easy as yours, so just take it quiet. All you gotta do is

take that remark back you just uttered. I ain't yella, and you gotta

say so. Then you hand over those fifteen bones, and I'm yer man."

It was incredible that Pat should have succumbed, but he did. Perhaps

he was none too sure of his friends in the bushes. Certainly the time

was getting short and he was in a hurry to get to his job on the

Highway. Also he had no mind for being discovered or interrupted. At

any rate with a hoarse little laugh of pretended courage he put his

hand in his baggy pocket and pulled out the bills.

"You win, Kid," he admitted, "I guess you're all white. Anything to

please the baby and get down to biz. Now, sonny, put that gun away, it

don't look well. Besides, I--got another." He put his hand

insinuatingly to his hip pocket with a grin, but Billy's grin answered

back: "That's all right, pard. I'll just keep this one awhile then. You don't

need two. Now, what's wanted?"

Pat edged away from the boy and measured him with his eye. The moon was

coming up and Billy loomed large in the darkness. There was a

determined set to his firm young shoulders, a lithe alertness about his

build, and a fine glint in his eye. Pat was really a coward. Besides,

Pat was getting nervous. The hidden telephone had called him several

times already. He could hear even now in imagination its faint click in

the moss. The last message had said that the car had passed the state

line and would soon be coming to the last point of communication. After

that it was the mountain highway straight to Pleasant View, nothing to

hinder. It was not a time to waste in discussion. Pat dropped to an

ingratiating whine.

"Come along then, Kid. Yes, bring your wheel. We'll want it. Down this

way, just over the tracks, so, see? We want you to fall off that there

wheel an' sprawl in the road like you had caught yer wheel on the track

an' it had skidded, see? Try her now, and just lay there like you was

off your feed."

Billy slung himself across his wheel, gave a cursory glance at the

landscape, took a running slide over the tracks with a swift pedal or

two and slumped in a heap, lying motionless as the dead. He couldn't

have done it more effectively if he had practised for a week. Pat

caught his breath and stooped over anxiously. He didn't want a death at

the start. He wouldn't care to be responsible for a concussion of the

brain or anything like that. Besides, he couldn't waste time fooling

with a fool kid when the real thing might be along any minute. He

glanced anxiously up the broad white ribbon of a road that gleamed now

in the moonlight, and then pulling out his pocket flash, flooded it

swiftly over Billy's upturned freckled face that lay there still as

death without the flicker of an eyelash. The man was panic-stricken. He

stooped lower, put out a tentative finger, turned his flash full in the

boy's face again, and was just about to call to his helpers for aid

when Billy opened a large eye and solemnly winked.