Senator Rexhill, on the next morning, surprised that Moran did not show up at the hotel, had gone in search of him, and was dumbfounded when he entered the office.

 

Moran, in his desperate efforts to free himself, had upset the chair into which he was tied, and being unable to right it again, had passed most of the night in a position of extreme discomfort. Toward morning, his confinement had become positive agony, and he had inwardly raved at Wade, the gag in his mouth making audible expression impossible, until he was black in the face.

 

"My God, Race!" the Senator exclaimed, when, having cut the lashings and withdrawn the gag, he saw his agent in a state bordering on collapse, "what has happened to you?" He helped the man to his feet and held him up.

 

"My throat--dry--whiskey!" Moran gasped, and groaned as he clutched at the desk, from which he slid into a chair, where he sat rubbing his legs, which ached with a thousand pains.

 

Rexhill found a bottle of whiskey and a glass on a shelf in the closet. He poured out a generous drink of the liquor and handed it to Moran, but the agent could not hold it in his swollen fingers. The Senator picked up the glass, which had not broken in its fall and, refilling it, held it to Moran's lips. It was a stiff drink, and by the time it was repeated, the agent was revived somewhat.

 

"Now, tell me," urged Rexhill.

 

Prepared though he was for an outburst of fury, he was amazed at the torrent of blasphemous oaths which Moran uttered. He caught Wade's name, but the rest was mere incoherence, so wildly mouthed and so foul that he began to wonder if torture had unbalanced the man's mind. The expression of Moran's eyes, which had become mere slits in his inflamed and puffy face, showed that for the time he was quite beyond himself. What with his blued skin and distended veins, his puffed lips and slurred speech, he seemed on the brink of an apoplectic seizure. Rexhill watched him anxiously.

 

"Come, come, man. Brace up," he burst out, at length. "You'll kill yourself, if you go on that way. Be a man."

 

The words seemed to have their effect, for the agent made a supreme effort at the self-control which was seldom lacking in him. He appeared to seize the reins of self-government and to force himself into a state of unnatural quiet, as one tames a frantic horse.

 

"The safe!" he muttered hoarsely, scrambling to his feet.

 

His stiffened legs still refused to function, however, and Rexhill, hastening to the safe, threw open the door. One glance at the disordered interior told him the whole story. Moran watched feverishly as he dragged the crumpled papers out on the floor and pawed through them.

 

"Gone?"

 

"Gone!"

 

They looked at each other, a thin tide of crimson brightening the congestion of Moran's visage, while Rexhill's face went ghastly white. With shaking fingers, the agent poured himself a third drink and tossed it down his throat.

 

"It was Wade who tied you up?"

 

Moran nodded.

 

"Him and that--girl--the Purnell girl." Stirred more by the other's expression of contempt than by the full half pint of whiskey he had imbibed, he crashed his fist down on the desk. "Mind what you say now, because, by God, I'm in no mood to take anything from you. He got the drop on me, you understand. Let it go at that."

 

"It's gone right enough--all gone." Rexhill groaned. "Why, he only needs to publish those plots to make this a personal fight between us and every property owner in the valley. They'll tar and feather us, if they don't kill us outright. It'll be gold with them--gold. Nothing else will count from now on."

 

"I'll get back at him yet!" growled Moran.

 

"You'll...." The Senator threateningly raised his gorilla-like arms, but let them drop helplessly again. "How did they get into the safe? Did you leave it open?"

 

"Do you think I'm a fool?" Moran fixed his baleful eyes upon his employer, as he leaned heavily, but significantly, across the flat desk. "Say, let's look ahead to to-morrow, not back to last night. Do you hear? I'll do the remembering of last night; you forget it!"

 

Rexhill tried to subdue him with his own masterful gaze, but somehow the power was lacking. Moran was in a dangerous frame of mind, and past the dominance of his employer. He had but one thought, that of vengeance upon the man who had misused him, to which everything else had for the time being to play second.

 

"You talk like I let them truss me up for fun," he went on. "I did it because I had to, because I was looking into the muzzle of a six-shooter in the hands of a desperate man; that was why. Do you get me? And I don't need to be reminded of it. No, by Heaven! My throat's as dry yet as a fish-bone, and every muscle in me aches like hell! I'll remember it all right, and he'll pay. Don't you have any worries about that."

 

Rexhill was sufficiently a captain of men to have had experience of such moods in the past, and he knew the futility of arguing. He carefully chose a cigar from his case, seated himself, and began to smoke.

 

Moran, apparently soothed by this concession to his temper, and a bit ashamed of himself, watched him for some moments in silence. When at last he spoke, his tone was more conciliatory.

 

"Have you heard from Washington?" he asked.

 

"I got a telegram this morning, saying that the matter is under advisement."

 

"Under advisement!" Moran snorted, in disgust. "That means that they'll get the cavalry here in time to fire a volley over our graves--ashes to ashes and dust to dust. What are you going to do about it?"

 

Rexhill blew a huge mouthful of fragrant smoke into the air.

 

"Frankly, Race, I don't think you're in a proper mood to talk."

 

"You're right." Something in Moran's voice suggested the explosion of a fire-arm, and the Senator looked at him curiously. "I'm through talking. We've both of us talked too damn much, and that's a fact."

 

"I'll be obliged to you," the Senator remarked, "if you'll remember that you draw a salary from me and that you owe me a certain amount of respect."

 

Moran laughed raucously.

 

"Respect! I don't owe you a damn thing, Senator; and what you owe me you won't be able to pay if you sit here much longer waiting for something to turn up. You'll be ruined, that's what you'll be--ruined!" He brought his big hand down on the table with a thump.

 

"By your own carelessness. Now, look here, Race, I've made allowances for you, because...."

 

"You don't need to soft soap me, Senator; save that for your office seekers." The agent was fast working himself into another passion. "I've not ruined you, and you know it. A safe's a safe, isn't it? Instead of ruining you, I'm trying to save you. If you go broke, you'll do it yourself with your pap and sentiment. But if I am to pull your chestnuts out of the fire for you, you've got to give me a free hand. I've got to fight fire with fire."

 

Rexhill wiped his glasses nervously, for despite his assumption of calm, his whole future swung upon the outcome of his Crawling Water venture. If he appeared calm, it was not because he felt so, but because the schooling of a lifetime had taught him that the man who keeps cool usually wins.

 

"There's nothing to do but go on as we are headed now," he declared. "Wade's discovery of our purpose is most unfortunate"--his voice shook a trifle--"but it can't be helped. In the legal sense, he has added to the list of his crimes, and we have more against him than we ever had. He now has three charges to face--murder, assault, and robbery. It rests with us whether he shall be punished by the courts for any of the three."

 

The Senator spoke emphatically in the effort to convince himself that his statements were practically true, but he avoided Moran's eyes as he did so. His show of optimism had little substance behind it, because now that his motives were likely to be bared to the public, he was too good a lawyer not to realize how little standing he would have before a jury, in that section at least; of course, Wade must realize this equally well and feel fortified in his own position. Rexhill's chief hope had been that the support of the cavalry from Fort Mackenzie would enable him to control the situation; but here, too, he was threatened by the unexpected hesitation of the authorities at Washington.

 

Moran, however, was frankly contemptuous of the prospect of help from that source. He had never believed greatly in it, although at the time it was first mentioned his enthusiasm for any plan of action had inspired him with some measure of the Senator's confidence. Now that his lust of revenge made him intolerant of all opposition, he was thoroughly exasperated by the telegram received from Washington, and had no faith in aid from such a quarter.

 

"What if your cavalry doesn't come?" he demanded.

 

"Then we must rely upon the Sheriff here to maintain the law that he is sworn to support."

 

"Bah! He's weakening now. He's not forgetting that he's to spend the rest of his days in this town, after we've gone back East, or perhaps to hell. Who's to look after him, then, if he's got himself in bad with the folks here? Senator"--Moran clumped painfully over to the safe and leaned upon it as he faced his employer--"it isn't cavalry that'll save you, or that old turkey buzzard of a sheriff either. I'm the man to do it, if anybody is, and the only way out is to lay for this man Wade and kidnap him." Rexhill started violently. "Kidnap him, and take him into the mountains, and keep him there with a gun at his head, until he signs a quit-claim. I've located the very spot to hide him in--Coyote Springs. It's practically inaccessible, a natural hiding-place."

 

Rexhill turned a shade or two paler as he nervously brushed some cigar ashes from his vest and sleeve. He had already gone farther along the road of crime than he felt to be safe, but the way back seemed even more dangerous than the road ahead. The question was no longer one of ethics, but purely of expediency.

 

"We haven't time to wait on cavalry and courts," Moran went on. "I'm willing to take the risk, if you are. If we don't take it, you know what the result will be. We may make our get-away to the East, or we may stop here for good--under ground. You have little choice either way. If you get out of this country, you'll be down and out. Your name'll be a byword and you'll be flat broke, a joke and an object of contempt the nation over. And it's not only yourself ............