Norfleet: the actual experiences of a Texas rancher's 30,000-mile transcontinental chase after five confidence men. Page: 116 of 369

                                
98

NORFLEET

I joined the two men who had started up the front
steps. Together we three entered the house.
There was no hall. The door from the porch opened
directly into what was intended for a big living room.
It must have been thirty by forty feet. The ceilings
were high raftered affairs and the general interior finish
rustic. The plate glass windows were so large on the
sea side of the room it seemed the entire side wall had
been left out. The view was gorgeous.
Opposite the front door and against the back wall
of the room was a table at which two men were seated.
One on each side. At first I thought my eyes were deceiving
me. I felt them grow big in their sockets. I
unconsciously rubbed the back of my hand across them,
and blinked as if to clear them of cobwebs. I went
nearer the table.
No, it was not an hallucination!
There in plain sight piled high on the table, was a
mountain of money! It was heaped up as if some one
had carelessly dumped a clothes basket of bills on the
table and gathered up those that fell from it and flung
them back on top of the mound. It staggered me. The
greenbacks were stacked according to denomination and
banded with regulation bank markers.
But the money was not guarding itself. Each of
the men seated at the table held a carbine rifle across
his knees. Buckled to the belt of each was a scabbara
into which was meaningly tucked a six shooter.
To the left of the money table against the side
wall opposite the windows, was a large blackboard checked
off in small squares. Before this bulletin board
stood a perspiring youth in his shirtsleeves: hair rumpled
and tie awry, after the manner of most approved stock
markers. He was frantically making little chalk notations
in the lined off spaces. He did not turn or give
us a glance.
In the center of the room was a long table with
telegraphic equipment. The telegrapher was the usual