THE STEADFAST HEART
mostly. Didn’t have much need fer last names in the shop.” But perhaps a week later he rushed upstairs to Dave Wilkins’s room and burst through the door. “I got it,” he shouted. “By Ginger! I got that off ’m my mind at last.” He scowled fiercely in his delight. “I got his doggone name. Hughes, that’s what it was. Cash Hughes.”
“Cash Hughes!” Dave swung around from his desk, leaped to his feet, and stood staring at Jake. “Did you say Cash Hughes?… Are you sure, Jake—sure?”
“Sure as preachin’.”
“But it can’t be—it can’t be,” said Dave. “Such things don’t happen…. Don’t mention this to a soul, Jake. Shut your teeth over it and clamp them…. Go away now, and let me think…. I’ve got to think.”
In an hour Dave was seated in Craig Browning’s office; his lean face was drawn, but his eyes were very bright, bright with unwonted excitement. “Craig,” he said, “Jake Schwartz has remembered what Titus Burke’s name used to be…. It was Cash Hughes!” Craig looked puzzled. “Yes…. What about it?”
“You don’t know?… That’s true, you moved here after it happened…. Craig, Cash Hughes was here twenty-eight years ago….
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