“Off color, I’m afraid, Perk,” Jack told him, after taking a quick look at his wonderful find in the hearth _cache_; “that miser story might go with some but it doesn’t wash with me worth a red cent. In the first place if this money had been hidden here by a miser, he’d have taken it away with him when he cut stick. Then again it would surely have been partly in hard cash, like gold eagles, and such stuff—all hoards of misers, you remember, are made up like that, Perk, and when you give this the once-over you’ll also notice how it’s all in bills, mostly fresh ones at that, as if they hadn’t seen much circulation, as you might say.”
Perk drew in a long breath, and continued to stare hard at the object Jack was holding out in front of him; it might be that something in the other’s words and manner suggested certain possibilities that seemed almost too staggering for poor Perk to digest offhand.
“Gee whittiker jewsharps! Jack—what’s this you’re hintin’ at, ol’ pal—give it to me easy-like, so I c’n swaller it—all in bills—mostly fresh ones at that—not seen much handlin’ around—say, are you tryin’ to tell me they’re every one five dollar bills,—Jack?”
“I reckon that’s what they are, Perk, I’d say, from taking a quick look at the same.”
“Bad currency—counterfeits—bogus stuff, er—what?” gasped the other.
“Look for yourself, and you’ll recognize them as having been printed from the same plates as the one we’re carrying with us as a sample of Slippery Slim’s best work.”
“Je-ru-salem crickets! I’m knocked silly for a fact,” whimpered Perk; and then, as if mustering up his vanishing stamina he went on to add: “but however could they’ve got right there under that brick—conjurer’s black magic, looks like to me, partner, it sure does.”
“Nonsense! that part of it is easy enough to figure out,” asserted Jack, as usual very matter-of-fact; “the only thing that seems to border on the miraculous is our running across this packet of all the people in the Far West—it looks to me as if some sort of Destiny might be handling the cards—that all we have to do is to keep moving and everything’s bound to come our way.”
“Sure does seem like a snap, and that’s a fact,” agreed Perk, calming down a little as he began to grow more accustomed to the great discovery that had resulted from their deciding to drop down, and have a sociable cup of hot coffee; “but I’ll be danged if I c’n make head or tail out o’ this happening—now, what under the sun did anybody want to stick that wad o’ long green under the same adobes, I’d like to know, partner?”