ence. Hellbeam to him was just an
employer. A means to those ends which he had in view. If Hellbeam turned
him down it would mean a setback, but not a disaster, and Idepski
appraised setbacks at their simple value, without exaggeration. Besides,
he knew that this Swede, powerful, wealthy as he was, could not afford
to do without him in this matter. His intolerant, hectic temper mattered
nothing at all. He paid for the privilege of its display, and he paid
well. So--

"There's nothing much to tell," the agent returned, with a shrug. "I'm
going to get him--that's all. See here, Mr. Hellbeam," he went on after
a pause, with a sudden change to keen energy, "you're a mighty big power
in the financial world, and to be that I guess you've had to be some
judge of the other feller. That's so. You most generally know when he's
beat before you begin. And when he squeals it don't come as a surprise.
Well, that's how it is with me, only it's a bigger thing to me because
it sometimes happens to mean the difference between life and death. Say,
when you put up your bluff at a feller, and watch him square in the
eyes, and you see 'em flicker and shift, do you reckon you've lit on the
'yellow streak,' that lies somewhere in most folk? I guess so. Well,
that's how I know my man. I've seen it in this bum, Leslie Standing as
he calls himself now. And when I saw it I knew he was beat, for all he'd
the drop on me. Since then my notion's proved itself. He's lit out. He's
cut from his gopher hole at Sachigo. An' when a gopher gets away from
his hole, the man with the gun has him dead set. But say, that muss up
you reckon I made doesn't look that way when you know the things it's
taught me. While I was way up at that penitentiary camp on the Beaver
River I kept all my ears and eyes wide, and I learned most of the things
a feller's liable to learn in this world when he acts that way. I
learned something of the notions lying back of this feller's work up
there. Say, he hadn't finished with you when he took that ten millions
out of you." An ironical smile lit the man's dark eyes as he thrust home
his retaliation for the financier's insults. "Not by a lot," he went on,
with a smiling display of teeth that conveyed nothing pleasant. "They've
a slogan up there that means a whole heap, and it comes from him, and
runs through the whole work going on, right down to the Chink camp
cooks. Guess that mill is only beginning. It's the ground work of a
mighty