telling
them to make sure of Williams and Bradford. We could spare both of them,
if we have to."

"Good!" said Flemister. "Then you had some such alternative in mind as
that I have just been proposing?"

"No," was the crusty rejoinder. "I was merely providing for the
hundredth chance. I don't like your alternative."

"Why don't you?"

"Well, for one thing, it's needlessly bloody. We don't have to go at
this thing like a bull at a gate. I've had my finger on the pulse of
things ever since Lidgerwood took hold. The dope is working all right in
a purely natural way. In the ordinary run of things, it will be only a
few days or weeks before Lidgerwood will throw up his hands and quit,
and when he goes out, I go in. That's straight goods this time."

"You thought it was before," sneered Flemister, "and you got beautifully
left." Then: "You're talking long on 'naturals' and the 'ordinary run of
things,' but I notice you schemed with Bart Rufford to put him out of
the fight with a pistol bullet!"

Judson felt a sudden easing of strains. He had told McCloskey that he
would be willing to swear to the voice of the man whom he had overheard
plotting with Rufford in Cat Biggs's back room. Afterward, after he had
sufficiently remembered that a whiskey certainty might easily lead up to
a sober perjury, he had admitted the possible doubt. But now Flemister's
taunt made assurance doubly sure. Moreover, the arch-plotter was not
denying the fact of the conspiracy with "The Killer."

"Rufford is a blood-thirsty devil--like yourself," the other man was
saying calmly. "As I have told you before, I've discovered Lidgerwood's
weakness--he can't call a sudden bluff. Rufford's play--the play I told
him to make--was to get the drop on him, scare him up good, and chase
him out of town--out of the country. He overran his orders--and went to
jail for it."

"Well?" said the mine-owner.

"Your scheme, as you outlined it to me in your cipher wire this
afternoon, was built on this same weakness of Lidgerwood's, and I agreed
to it. As I understood it, you were to toll him up here with some lie
about meeting Grofield, and then one of us was to put a pistol in his
face and bluff him into throwing up his job. As I say, I agreed to it.
He'll have to go when the fight with the men gets hot enough; but he
might hold on too long for our comfort."

"Well?" said Flemister again, this time more impatiently, Judson
thought.

"He queered your lay-out