"Well, the $600 looked like better than no bread to Jink and his bunch, and they took it and went out after Gately. It was getting along toward twilight. Reeves and Pendleton figured it that Gately, in pulling down the roll, had been acting in the interest of the house. They hadn’t the slightest notion that Gately had eloped with the $5200. They thought he’d plant the money, keep out of sight for a few days until the Jink McAtee push could be compromised with, and then come back.
"McAtee’s gang beat up every shack in town thoroughly, but there was no Gately. They whipped the prairie for miles around, but they didn’t spring Gately. Gately had gone. The gang came back to the Reeves-Pendleton layout, all of ’em pretty ugly. Pendleton got them bunched, made a speech to them to the effect that if Gately wasn’t corralled within a week he’d make good the whole amount coming to them out of his own pocket, and soft-soaped them into accepting those terms. They dispersed.
"When Gately didn’t come back the next day, or give any indication to his employers where he was, they got worried.
"’I think Gately has drilled,’ Pendleton said to me that day. ’He’s an Iowan, and there’s going to be a big conclave and tournament of firemen in Council Bluffs next week. I’ll bet Gately has made for Council Bluffs. I’m going after him. Come along with me.’
"I told Pendleton that I hadn’t anything to do with the game, but I wasn’t overlooking business propositions, and when he offered me 50 per cent. of all the money we might reclaim from Gately, I went with him. We got onto Gately’s trail in Council Bluffs, as Pendleton had shrewdly guessed we might, but he had been tipped off that we were after him, and he chased over to Omaha. We were right after him, and he jumped for a town in Southwestern Iowa called Red Oak. We were hot on his trail, and we met up with him squarely next day in Red Oak.
"’Let’s have the money, Gately,’ said Pendleton.
"’I’ll pass you back the house bunch, $2600,’ said Gately, ’but the rest of it I keep,’ and he looked as if he meant it, good and hard, at that.
"’How do you make that out a square deal?’ asked Pendleton.
"’Because,’ replied Gately, pretty convincingly, ’it was me that took the chance. I made a mistake, and stood to lose the house’s $2600. If I hadn’t taken a chance, they’d have got the coin. If I’d have won their $2600, your shack would have been shot into a sieve, and me into the bargain. It was a case of run. I had to do the running. I earned the $2600, and I hang on to it.’