ou will see that I am not entirely to blame. You will see, too, what
havoc Tom Taggart has wrought in my life; why he has tried many times
to kill me. Calumet, beware of the Taggarts! For the last five years
they have been a constant menace to me; I have been forced to be on my
guard against them day and night. They have hounded me, induced my men
to betray me. In five years I have not slept soundly because of them.
But I have foiled them. I am dying now, and that which they seek will
be hidden until you fulfill the conditions which I impose on you. I
know you are coming home--I can feel it--and I know that when you read
what is to follow you will be eager to square my account with Tom
Taggart.

"Before going any further, before you read my story, I want you to know
that the cursed virago whom you saw buried in the cottonwood was not
your real mother. Your mother died giving you birth, and her body lies
in a quiet spot beside the Rio Pecos, at Twin Pine crossing, about ten
miles north of the Texas border. God rest her."

Again Calumet glanced at Betty. She was reading, apparently
unconscious of him, and without disturbing her Calumet laid down the
finished page and took up another.

CHAPTER VIII

THE TOLTEC IDOL

"I was twenty-five when your mother died," this page began. "I had a
little ranch in the Pecos valley near Twin Pine crossing, and I had
just begun to taste prosperity. After your mother died things began to
go wrong. It didn't take me long to conclude that she had been
responsible for what success I had had, and that without her I couldn't
hope to keep things together. I didn't try very hard; I'll admit that.
I just gradually let go all holds and began to slip--began to drift
back into the sort of company I'd kept before I met your mother. They
were not bad fellows, you understand--just the rakehelly, reckless sort
that keep hanging on to the edge of things and making a living by their
wits. I'd come West without any definite idea of what I wanted to do,
and I fell in with these men naturally and easily, because they were of
my type.

"I had three intimates among them--a tall, clean-limbed fellow with the
bluest and steadiest eyes I ever saw in a man, who called himself
'Nebraska'; a rangy Texan named Quint Taylor, who maintained that
manual labor was a curse and quoted the Scriptures to prove it; and Tom
Taggart. Tom and I were thick. I liked him, and he'd done things for
me