of thing of you or Leland!
You'd all get rich by smashing me, and then you, you two-faced little
cur, would buy the Bar L-M back from Leland for nothing, with money
you'd taken from Arthur and me! Why, you petit [Transcriber's note:
petty?] larceny sneak, I don't know why I am talking with you instead
of slapping your dirty face!"

"If you will talk reasonably--"

"Talk reasonably? You're damned right I will! Why did Arthur borrow
twenty-five thousand dollars to begin with? What went with it? Who
got it?"

"I don't know what he wanted it for," snapped Garth. "I don't know
what went with it. I suppose the man who murdered him robbed him, too."

"You don't mean he had a sum like that with him in cash?"

"Yes. He insisted upon it. I was with Leland when the money was
turned over."

"And you--_forgot_--to tell me that!"

Conway, though his lips moved, made no audible reply. Wayne stood
staring at him a moment, his face white with passion. Suddenly he
cried out in a voice shaking with fury as he lifted one hand high above
his head and brought it smashing down into his open palm.

"Get off of the place!" he shouted. "Sneak back to Leland; go whimper
about Sledge Hume's legs. Tell Leland that I said that you are a
damned scoundrel and that he's another! Tell him that I said that I am
going to make the whole thieving pack of you eat out of my hand before
I let up on you. And now, for God's sake, go!"

He whirled and went back to the house with long strides. He flung wide
the door, and as he came swiftly to the fireplace, his face still white
and hard, he thrust out his hand to Helga Strawn, grasping hers as
though it had been a man's.

"I'm with you," he said crisply. "I'll see Ruf Ettinger myself
to-morrow."

Her eyes which had been frowning during Dart's latest attempt to be
entertaining, grew suddenly brilliant, her cheeks flushed happily.

"Dart," Wayne, continued, turning to the little man who had begun
nodding his head approvingly when Wayne's shoulder had struck the door
and who was still nodding, "you've done me a good turn to-night. I'm
not ungrateful. But Miss--"

"Hazleton," prompted Dart.

"--will have to be going right away and I want to talk with her alone."

"Sure," agreed Dart. "I'll get my book and go down to the bunk house.
I'm reading a swell story about a guy named Jupiter and a skirt named--"

For the first and only time on record Willie Dart stopped his flow of
word