Now get under cover, boys, or you'll be soaked
through."
The landlord met us with an air half-anxious, half-angry.
"I'd like to know who's to pay for this!" he cried. "There's a sash and
four panes of glass gone to smithereens."
"The gentleman who just went out will be glad to pay for it, if you'll
call it to his attention," I said blandly.
"I'll have the law on him!" shouted the landlord, getting red in the
face. "And if he's a friend of yours you'd better settle for him, or it
will be the worse for him."
"I'm afraid he isn't a friend of mine," I said dubiously. "He didn't
appear to take that view of it."
"That's so," admitted the landlord. "But I don't know his name, and
somebody's got to settle for that glass."
I obliged the landlord with Mr. Meeker's name, and with the bestowal of
this poor satisfaction returned to the interrupted meal.
"Well, I reckon he wouldn't have been very pleasant company if you'd
got him," said one of the men consolingly, when we had told our tale of
the search for a guest.
"I suspect he would be less disagreeable in here than out with his
gang," I returned dryly, and turned the subject. I did not care to
discuss my plan to get a hostage now that it had failed.
The gray day plashed slowly toward nightfall. The rain fell by fits and
starts, now with a sudden dash, now gently as though it were only of
half a mind to fall at all. But the wind blew strong, and the clouds
that drove up from the far south were dark enough to have borne threats
of a coming deluge.
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