Everything he has has gone into the company that is getting its chief
encouragement out of the Tigmores. It will be easy to ruin him."

"Yes, God above, it will be easy! We r-r-ruin him. We do that thing
quick and glad." Bernique slid his lean hands up Steering's arms and
held to him.

"Wait! Wait!" The Frenchman's convulsive anger received a sudden check
by the sound of Steering's voice. He clung more tightly to Steering's
arms as he looked into Steering's face, then shrank back helplessly.

"My God!" said the old man, "I forgot!"

"Yes," answered Steering, no hesitation in his voice. "Yes, you forgot
_her_. We must not do that, you know."

After a while they sat down and talked it over at length from beginning
to end, and then back again, from end to beginning. Up in the Tigmores
Crit Madeira's drills beat and bore at the heart of the earth, deeper,
deeper; by the Redbud shack, the two men, on the ground, bore into
Madeira's trickery, deeper, deeper. By the light of that torch from the
Rockies, they followed the twisting trail all the way from inception to
finish. The tortuous, underhand curve of it now and then looked like the
self-deceptive work of lunatic cunning. As they talked about it, they
talked too earnestly for the little whisking movements in the growth up
the bluff to reach their ears.

"At least," cried old Bernique at last, "at least the Teegmores are
yours! At last! At last!"

At last! At last! Steering's eyes were travelling the long tumbling
Tigmore line. "If they are," he said in that musing way he had developed
within the last quarter of an hour, "if I take the Tigmores now, Uncle
Bernique, I'll pull Madeira's house about him. That company of his is
not so secure that it could stand a blow at its head. If I take the
Tigmores,--Uncle Bernique, listen a minute," he was pleading, "she has
been used to much all her life. I can't take her father's fortune away
from him. Don't you see that? I can't do anything. You understand?" he
was commanding. Bernique jumped to his feet.

"God above, you mean----" The thought snapped in the old man's brain,
the words stuck in his throat.

"I mean that we must leave things as they are. I can't ruin her father.
That's all I mean!"

Bernique doubled up both fists. "I'll see him damn' before he shall
keep those Teegmores! I can r-ruin him!" But Bruce caught the old man's
arm in a grip that hurt. When Bernique spoke again it was to say
breathlessly, "You take t