James B. Hendryx

“ Bad Jack laughed.
“So you think you can take me to Dawson, do you?”
Rookie nodded.
“We start at daylight,” he answered. “And if I were you I’d get busy on those muckluks. Because a hundred-mile hike in your stocking feet ain’t going to be any snap.”
“A hundred miles,” cried the other. “I couldn’t walk a hundred miles in a month on snow-shoes. My feet’s all blistered now.” ”

“ Halting upon the top of a low ridge, the boy saw smoke ascending from the dense thicket a mile ahead, and abandoning the floundering trail, he cut straight through the timber. The camp was easily located, and after a few moments of reconnoitering the youngster slipped noiselessly to the fire.
Rolled in a single blanket close to the blaze lay Bad Jack. A rifle of heavy caliber leaned against a near-by tree, and three woolen socks and a pair of moccasins decorated some sticks stuck into the snow by the fireside. The other sock with the foot burned off lay smoking at the edge of the coals. ”

“ Never expected no one to blow a safe up here, nohow.”
Inside the store a group of excited miners had collected about the rifled safe.
“The fellows that did that knew their business,” said McGovern, after a thorough examination of the wrecked strong-box. “They did it in the early part of the night too—for they left no trail.”
As the news of the daring robbery spread over the camp, other men flocked to the tent, and ugly mutterings ran through the crowd. Some one produced a rope and a determined group edged toward the door way. McGovern turned suddenly upon them. ”

“ You have got to run straight—it’s the only way. Whenever you feel like it, I wish you would come up to the house and talk things over with me, and I think, very probably, that you will find that I am one of your friends.”
Bad Jack tried to stammer his thanks, choked up, and grasped the judge’s hand, and then tightly clutching the paper, he turned toward the boy, who stood trim and neat in his service uniform, and the gray-haired judge and the stern-faced assistant commissioner watched in silence, as Rookie Adair and his prisoner left the room, arm in arm. ”

“ McGovern and Blaine still snored in their blankets. Suddenly, an excited face was thrust into the interior. It was the face of Hodson, the company’s storekeeper.
“Hey, get up quick!” the man roared. “Some one’s blowed the safe.”
McGovern and Blaine blinked sleepily at the face in the doorway.
“Safe,” cried Rookie. “What safe?”
“Why, the safe down to the store. We brung it up in a polin’ boat to keep the cash in. An’ not only that—when the money begun to be stole out of the tents, most of the boys brung their cash over to be locked up, too. ”

“ For in the gold country men will toil at their work, contented with their jobs and satisfied with their wage, and then, suddenly, comes the whispered news of a strike on some far distant creek or river. ”

“ A constable entered with a telegram which he laid upon the Assistant Commissioner’s desk. The officer read it and handed it to the judge.
“Your friends have been arrested,” he said, turning to the prisoner.
“They ain’t my friends,” answered Bad Jack, “I thought they was, but I know different now. I ain’t got no friends. There’s only one reason, Judge, it’s because I ain’t earned none. You see, Judge, I thought it was a fine thing to be known as Bad Jack Creedy. I thought I was gettin’ away with it, until the kid’s pardner, the big feller, called the turn on me. ”

“ And when I get turned loose nobody won’t have anythin’ on me. I’ll make me a new start. A man can’t run straight less’n he starts straight, can he, kid?”
“No,” Rookie answered, meeting his gaze squarely. “He can’t. You said something, then, Jack.”
He held out a small hand and the other gripped it firmly.
“Come on,” said Bad Jack, “let’s roll in, so as we can get an early start. I want to hurry up and get it over with.”
AT DAWSON, the prisoner was hustled into a cell and Rookie Adair sought out the assistant commissioner with whom he was closeted for over an hour. ”

“ Tell me, how many friends have you got in Tetling? You ain’t got none, have you? You knew that, an’ it kind of got under your hide. ‘Posin’ as the camp’s bad man don’t get you no friends. But you started in that way an’ you got to play your string out.
“Then along comes Dick Sloan an’ he sizes you up in about a minute. He’s got some game or other up his sleeve, an’ he knows he can use you, so he starts in to be friends with you. He tells you about the White River stampede. He kids you ’long a little an’ you throw in with him. Why? ”

“ You ain’t got no fast horse nor no gun, an’ you don’t know where you’re goin’, but you got the nerve, or you think you have, an’ that ’mounts to the same thing. A couple of weeks later you’re out West. You get a job in a sheep camp or a loggin’ gang. An’ you work three or four months till you get the lay of the land, an’ enough money to buy an outfit.
“’Bout that time you get wised up to the fact that you ain’t noticed no stage-coaches, an’ the fellows that travel the trail ain’t got no oncommon bulge to their pants pockets that looks like a gold-mine. ”

“ An’ always posin’ with your blusterin’ an’ bluffin' as a bad man. You don’t fool no one. You don’t make no friends. The boys call you Bad Jack an’ they string you along, but you take it alj in earnest till you really get to believin’ you are a bad man.
“Right there you hit the danger line. The history of most of the ‘Bad Jacks’ winds up about there. They pick out some quiet, doleful-minded cuss that is wearin’ overalls an’ mindin’ his own business, an’ start somethin’. ”

“ And with the snow coverin’ our tracks, we can make twenty-five mile with a twelve-hour start. I got four pair of rackets cached over in the timber.”
“I never walked on snow-shoes,” ventured Bad Jack, doubtfully.
“That don’t make no difference. Same as any other kind of walkin’. Just put ’em on and hike out. Still, if you don’t want to be in on this, you don’t need to. I ain’t strong for no chechako nohow. But I took a chance on you, ’cause I says to myself ‘There’s a kid,’ I says, ‘that’s got somethin’ to him.’”
“’Course, I’m in on it,” cried the other, flushing. ”

“ The sergeant paused and gazed speculatively at his two subordinates.
“You go after Bad Jack, kid,” he said, at length. “An’ when you get him, take him on to Dawson. Take him straight acrost. There ain’t nothin’ will do him so much good as a hundred-mile hike. You got grub enough to take you to old man Conrad’s, on Ladue Creek. Then cut acrost to Sixty-mile an’ on down the river an’ don’t be easy on him, neither. It’s just what he needs.”
“What charge shall I place against him?” asked the boy.
McGovern grinned. ”