Claire, wet from having
swum the Neosho up above there, stopped to rest in the gray of the
morning. You didn't see him, but he saw you."

My father paused and, turning his back on the cowardly form in the
chair, walked to the window. Presently he sat down again.

"Mrs. Whately was crushed with grief over her husband's death; she was
trustful and utterly ignorant in business matters; and in these
circumstances you secured her signature to a deed for the delivery of
all her bank stock to you. She had no idea what all that paper meant.
She only wanted to be alone with her overwhelming sorrow. I need not go
through that whole story of how steadily, by fraud, and misuse, and
downright lie, you have eaten away her property, getting everything into
your own name, until now you would turn the torture screw and force a
marriage to secure the remnant of the Whately estate, you greedy,
grasping villain!

"But defrauding Irving Whately's heirs and getting possession of that
store isn't the full limit of your 'business.' You and Tell Mapleson,
after cutting Dodd and Conlow out of the game, using Conlow only as a
cat's paw, you two have been conducting a systematic commerce on
commission with one Jean Pahusca, highway robber and cut-throat, who
brings in money and small articles of value stolen in Topeka and Kansas
City and even St. Louis, with the plunder that could be gathered along
the way, all stored in the old stone cabin loft and slipped in here
after dark by as soft-footed a scoundrel as ever wore a moccasin. You
and Tell divide the plunder and promise Jean help to do his foes to
death--fostering his savage blood-thirsty spirit."

"You can't prove that. Jean's word's no good in law; and you never found
it out through Le Claire. He's Jean's father; Dodd says so." Judson was
choking with rage.

"The priest can answer that charge for himself," my father said calmly.
"No, it was your head clerk, Thomas O'Meara, who took a ten days'
vacation and stayed at night up in the old stone cabin for his health.
You know he has weak lungs. He found out many things, even Jean's fear
of ghosts. That's the Indian in Jean. The redskin doesn't live that
isn't afraid of a ghost, and O'mie makes a good one. This traffic has
netted you and Mapleson shamefully large amounts.

"Where's my evidence?" he asked, as Judson was about to speak. "Ever
since O'mie went into the store, your books have been kept, and
incidentally your patronage has incr