He had made mistakes--and he would have
to pay for them--but only once. He would not make these mistakes
again. A man was a fool who deliberately rode his horse into the same
box canon twice.
Pete wondered if his letter to Jim Bailey had been received and what
Bailey's answer would be. The letter must have reached Bailey by this
time. And then Pete thought of The Spider's note, advising him to call
at the Stockmen's Security; and of The Spider's peculiar insistence
that he do so--that Hodges would "use him square."
Pete wondered what it all signified. He knew that The Spider had money
deposited with the Stockmen's Security. The request had something to
do with money, without doubt. Perhaps The Spider had wished him to
attend to some matter of trust--for Pete was aware that The Spider had
trusted him, and had said so, almost with his last breath. But Pete
hesitated to become entangled further in The Spider's affairs. He did
not intend to make a second mistake of that kind.
Monday of the following week Pete was out on the veranda--listening to
little Ruth, a blue-eyed baby patient who as gravely explained the
mysteries of a wonderful puzzle game of pasteboard cows and horses and
a farmyard "most all cut to pieces," as Ruth said, when Doris stepped
from the hall doorway and, glancing about, finally discovered Pete in
the far corner of the veranda--deeply absorbed in searching for the
hind leg of a noble horse to which little Ruth had insisted upon
attaching the sedate and ignoble hind quarters of a maternal cow.
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