The Rubber Band/The Red Box 2-In-1 by Rex Stout Read Free Book Online Page A

in case I never get home to tell you about it. I’ll have to begin away back
.
    “I’ve told you a lot of wild tales about the old days in Nevada. I’ve told you this one too, but I’ll repeat it here briefly. It was at Silver City, in
1895.
I was
25
years old, so it was
10
years before I met you. I was broke, and so was the gang of youngsters I’m telling about. They were all youngsters but one. We weren’t friends, there was no such thing as a friend around there. Most of the bunch of
2000
or so that inhabited Silver City camp at that time were a good deal older than us, which was how we happened to get together—temporarily. Everything was temporary!
    “The ringleader of our gang was a kid we called Rubber on account of the way he bounced back up when he got knocked down. His name was Coleman, but I never knew his first name, or if I did I can’t remember it, though I’ve often tried. Because Rubber was our leader, someone cracked a joke one day that we should call ourselves The Rubber Band, and we did. Pretty soon most of Silver City was calling us that
.
    “One of the gang, a kid named George Rowley, shot a man and killed him. From what I heard—I didn’t see it—he had as good a right to shoot as was usually needed around there, but the trouble was that the one he killed happened to be a member of the Vigilance Committee. It was at night
, 24
hours after the shooting, that they decided to hang him. Rowley hadn’t had sense enough to make a getaway, so they took him and shut him up in a shanty until daylight, with one of their number for a guard, an Irishman. As Harlan Scovil would say—I’ll never forget Harlan—he was a kind of a man named Mike Walsh
.
    “Rowley went after his guard, Mike Walsh. I mean talking to him. Finally, around midnight, he persuaded Mike to send for Rubber Coleman. Rubber had a talk with him and Mike. Then there was a lot of conspiring, and Rubber did a lot of dickering with Rowley. We were gathered in the dark in the sagebrush out back of John’s Palace, a shack out at the edge of the
city—
”
    Clara Fox looked up. “My father underscored the word city.”
    Wolfe nodded. “Properly, no doubt.”
    She went on:
“—and we had been drinking some and were having a swell time. Around two o’clock Rubber showed up again and lit matches to show us a paper George Rowley had
signed, with him and Mike Walsh as witnesses. I’ve told you about it. I can’t give it to you word for word, but this is exactly what it said. It said that his real name wasn’t George Rowley, and that he wasn’t giving his real name in writing, but that he had told it to Rubber Coleman. It said that he was from a wealthy family in England, and that if he got out of Silver City alive he would go back there, and some day he would get a share of the family pile. It said it wouldn’t be a major share because he wasn’t an oldest son. Then it hereby agreed that whenever and whatever he got out of his family connections, he would give us half of it, provided we got him safe out of Silver City and safe from pursuit, before the time came to hang him
.
    “We were young, and thought we were adventurers, and we were half drunk or maybe more. I doubt if any of us had any idea that we would ever get hold of any of the noble English wealth, except possibly Rubber Coleman, but the idea of the night rescue of a member of our gang was all to the good. Rubber had another paper ready too, all written up. It was headed, PLEDGE OF THE RUBBER BAND, and we all signed it. It had already been signed by Mike Walsh. In it we agreed to an equal division of anything coming from George Rowley, no matter who got it or when
.
    “We were all broke except Vic Lindquist, who had a bag of gold dust. It was Rubber’s suggestion that we get Turtle-back in. Turtle-back was an old-timer who owned the fastest horse in Silver City. He had no use for that kind of a horse; he only happened to own it because he had won it in a poker game