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 h