“Then it was because it was to his interest to be square. He’ll do you up yet, if he gets the chance and thinks it worth while. He’s had his finger in every crooked scheme that’s been put through from Raton to El Paso, and his hands are as bloody as his pockets are dirty.”
“Don’t you think it’s going a little too far,” asked Bancroft, smiling calmly, “to accuse a man in that wholesale way when you haven’t any basis for your assertions but the merest idle gossip?”
Conrad gave an indignant snort. “Oh, I’m not saying he’s done the jobs himself. He thinks too much of that fat paunch of his to put that into any danger. But why does he keep those Mexican thugs hanging around him if it isn’t to use them for things he wouldn’t dare do himself? Why, I heard from Santa Fe only last week that he’s taken into his pay that Mexican cutthroat, Liberato Herrara, whom he saved last Winter from conviction for the Paxton murder.”
“No, Aleck,” he went on. “I buck when it comes to Dell Baxter for Congress again. If he gets the nomination and the other side puts up Johnny Martinez, as it’s likely they will, I’m going to support Johnny.”
“But he’s a Mexican.”
“I don’t care what he is as long as he’s a decent man. He won’t be a disgrace to the Territory in Washington, and that’s more than you can say of Baxter.”
Bancroft’s impassive face lighted with a bantering smile. “There’s no limit to your bad opinion of a man, is there, Curt, if he once gets into your disfavor? By the way, is it true that the Castletons are behind Johnny Martinez?”
“I don’t know, and I don’t care. I’m their hired man here on the ranch, but my vote’s my own, and so’s what little influence I may have, and I’ll do with both of ’em just what I damn please. And if it came to a show-down, I’d be perfectly willing to lose my job if that would keep Dell Baxter from going back to Congress.”
Bancroft laughed again. Conrad’s eye, as he turned to his desk for more cigars, fell upon the little pile of letters and papers he had just received. On the top lay the Tremper & Townsend envelope. “By the way, Aleck, you’re from Boston, ain’t you?” he exclaimed impulsively.
In the next room, Lucy, listening sleepily to the two voices, had been noting the difference in their quality. Conrad’s was high and clear, his speech rapid and incisive. Her father’s, lower and more deliberate, had in it a subtle, persuasive quality. “Dear daddy!” she whispered softly, her heart warm with affection. Then the new, sharp edge in Conrad’s tone gripped her attention and sent her eyes flying open. Wide awake on the instant, she listened for the sound of her father’s voice again. Had she been on the scene, she might have noted that he turned an instant’s keen gaze upon his companion before he answered, carelessly enough:
“Yes; originally. But I’ve come from so many other places since then that I almost forget it, unless somebody reminds me. I haven’t been back there, or known much about the old place, for years.”
Conrad’s boyish smile illuminated his face and twinkled in his blue eyes. “Yes,” he said; “’most everybody out here is so everlastingly on the lope that it’s no wonder some of ’em lose their names every once in a while and have to pick up ’most anything that comes handy. I’m no exception, though I’ve not yet forgotten ‘what was my name back in the States.’ But did you know anything about the Delafield affair in Boston, fifteen or sixteen years ago?”
“I heard of it at the time, but it was after I left the city. It was so long ago that I forget the details. Skipped, didn’t he, with a lot of funds? Or was he the one who defaulted and jumped into the Charles River?”
Conrad had an eagerness of speech and manner that in a man of less vigor would have been accounted nervousness. Voice, face, and gesture were alive with it as he responded: “Jump nothing! except to get out of reach of his creditors! He’s alive yet and making money somewhere, and I mean to find him! I’ve got a particular interest in that man, and when I come up with him he’ll have a particular interest in me. For I’m going to give him such a song-and-dance as he’s never had before.”
Bancroft listened calmly, his face and manner as impassive as usual, but his eyes narrowed as they met his companion’s excited gaze. Smiling slightly, he replied, “What has he done to stir you up so? You must have been too young to be interested in financial investments then.”
“So I was, directly. Nevertheless, it happens, Aleck, that the Delafield affair has influenced me and my life more than any other one thing. My father lost everything he had in Sumner L. Delafield’s smash-up. I was fifteen years old then, and getting ready to go to Michigan University—afterward I was to study law and be a prominent citizen. My father met Delafield first during a business trip to Boston—we lived in central Illinois, and father was well-to-do—and, just like everybody else, he gave the man his entire confidence. You remember, of course, how Delafield came to the top as a regular young Napoleon of business, and soon made a reputation as one of the big financiers. When he turned up missing one fine morning, and it was found that the bottom had dropped out of everything, most people believed he had killed himself. But he hadn’t, I happen to know, and he’s still alive. Well, my father had been so influenced by Delafield—the fellow must have been a persuasive cuss—that he had put everything he could raise into the man’s schemes, and had even mortgaged our home. He had a weak heart, and when he read the news of Delafield’s default and disappearance he fell out of his chair dead. The sudden shock of it all prostrated my mother, and she died in giving premature birth to a child. So there was I, a fifteen-year-old boy, suddenly dropped to the bottom of poverty, with two younger sisters and a little brother to take care of.
“I tell you, I swore vengeance on that man. I promised myself I’d hunt him down if it took a lifetime. I’m on his trail now, and I’m not going to leave it until I run him into his hole. Then I’m going to stand him up and call him to his face all he deserves; and give him a gun, so he can have a fair chance for his worthless life, and take one myself; and then I’ll put a bullet through his scoundrel brain if I have to hang for it afterward!”
In the adjoining room Lucy Bancroft, with wide eyes and heightened color, was listening to Conrad’s story. The thrill of keen-edged purpose in his tense and eager tones had set her nerves to vibrating until her body was a-tremble. At his last sentence Curtis brought his fist down on the table with a crash that almost startled her into outcry. A moment of silence followed, and then she heard her father’s cool and even voice, “But suppose he should put one through yours first?”
“Oh, he’s welcome to do that if he can draw quicker or shoot straighter than I can. He’ll get one through his head before the baile is over, and that’s all I care about. The round-up’s coming, and I reckon he knows it. For to-day I got a letter from Tremper & Townsend of Boston, who settled up his affairs after his disappearance, enclosing a check for five hundred dollars, saying he wished it sent to me as the first instalment of the amount he owed my father, which he hopes, before long, to be able to pay in full.”
Bancroft flicked the ash from his cigar with unusual care, looked at it with contemplative interest, and drew a whiff or two before he spoke. Turning to Conrad with a quizzical smile, he said: “Well, Curt, doesn’t that rather take the edge off your purpose? Why are you still shaking your gory locks and roaring like a wounded bull at him when he’s evidently doing the square thing by you? Why don’t you let up on your chase and give him a chance?”
“Not on your life,” was Conrad’s emphatic rejoinder. “It’s too late in the game for me to take repentance and an honest purpose on the hoof! He’s found out that I’m getting hot on the scent and he wants to buy me off—that’s all that check means. It’s not the loss of the money that sticks in my craw; it’s the deviltry he worked years ago. Whenever I find that he’s discharging his debts to all his other creditors, who aren’t after him hot-foot, then I’ll consent to wait for my parley until he has settled the whole score.”
Lucy