"I suppose so. I felt a little better about it, because they had me in
the same boat. That let me out in my own feelings, naturally."

"How?" asked Orde swiftly.

"There had been trouble up there between Plant--you remember I wrote you
of the cattle difficulties?"

"With Simeon Wright? I know all that."

"Well, one of the cattlemen was ruined by Plant's methods; his wife and
child died from want of care on that account. He was the one who killed
Plant; you remember that."

"Yes."

"I happened to be near and I helped him escape."

"And some one connected with the Modoc Company was a witness,"
conjectured Orde. "Who was it?"

"A man who went under the name of Oldham. A certain familiarity puzzled
me for a long time. Only the other day I got it. He was Mr. Newmark."

"Newmark!" cried Orde, stopping short and staring fixedly at his son.

"Yes; the man who was your partner when I was a very small boy. You
remember?"

"Remember!" repeated Orde; then in tones of great energy: "He and I both
have reason to remember well enough! Where is he now? I can put a stop
to him in about two jumps!"

"You won't need to," said Bob quietly; "he's dead--shot last week."

For some moments nothing more was said, while the two men trudged
beneath the hanging peppers near the entrance to Sunrise Drive.

"I always wondered why he had it in for me, and why he acted so
queerly," Bob broke the silence at last. "He seemed to have a special
and personal enmity for me. I always felt it, but I couldn't make it
out."

"He had plenty of reasons for that. But it's funny Welton didn't
recognize the whelp."

"Mr. Welton never saw him," Bob explained--"that is, until Newmark was
dead. Then he recognized him instantly. What was it all about?"

Orde indicated the bench on the canon's edge.

"Let's sit," said he. "Newmark and I made our start together. For eight
years we worked together and built up a very decent business. Then, all
at once, I discovered that he was plotting systematically to do me out
of every cent we had made. It was the most cold-blooded proposition I
ever ran across."

"Couldn't you prove it on him?" asked Bob.

"I could prove it all right; but the whole affair made me sick. He'd
always been the closest friend, in a way, I had ever had; and the shock
of discovering what he really was drove everything else out of my head.
I was young then. It seemed to me that all I wanted was to wipe the
whole affair off the slat