night, as their cruel
bonds gnawed at their patience. For the rest, the Western world had
resumed its wonted air.

CHAPTER XIV

THE HUE AND CRY

"A thousand head of cattle, John! A thousand; and 'hustled' from under
our very noses. By thunder! it is intolerable. Over thirty-five thousand
dollars gone in one clean sweep. Why, I say, do we pay for the up-keep
of the police if this sort of thing is allowed to go on? It is
disgraceful. It means ruination to the country if a man cannot run his
stock without fear of molestation. Who said that scoundrel Retief was
dead--drowned in the great muskeg? It's all poppy-cock, I tell you; the
man's as much alive as you or I. Thirty-five thousand dollars! By
heavens!--it's--it's scandalous!"

Lablache leant forward heavily in his chair and rested his great arms
upon John Allandale's desk. "Poker" John and he were seated in the
former's office, whither the money-lender had come, post-haste, on
receiving the news of the daring raid of the night before. The great
man's voice was unusually thick with rage, and his asthmatical breathing
came in great gusts as his passionate excitement grew under the lash of
his own words. The old rancher gazed in stupefied amazement at the
financier. He had not as yet fully realized the fact with which he had
just been acquainted in terms of such sweeping passion. The old man's
brain was none too clear in the mornings now. And the suddenness of the
announcement had shocked his faculties into a state of chaos.

"Terrible--terrible," was all he was able to murmur. Then, bracing
himself, he asked weakly, "But what are you to do?"

The weather-beaten old face was working nervously. The eyes, in the
past keen and direct in their glance, were bloodshot and troubled. He
looked like a man who was fast breaking up. Very different from the
night when we first met him at the Calford Polo Club ball. There could
be no doubt as to the origin of this swift change. The whole atmosphere
of the man spoke of drink.

Lablache turned on him without any attempt to conceal the latent
ferocity of his nature. The heavy, pouchy jowl was scarlet with his
rage. The money-lender had been flicked upon a very raw and tender spot.
Money was his god.

"What am I to do?" he retorted savagely. "What are _we_ to do? What is
all the ranching world of Alberta to do? Why, fight, man. Hound this
scoundrel to his lair. Follow him--track him. Hunt him from bush to bush
until we f