it up.

To begin with Roscommon: To do justice to his later conduct and
expressions, it must be remembered that when he accepted the claim for
the "Red-Rock Rancho," yet unquestioned, from the hands of Garcia, he
was careless, or at least unsuspicious of fraud. It was not until he had
experienced the intoxication of litigation that he felt, somehow, that
he was a wronged and defrauded man, but with the obstinacy of defrauded
men, preferred to arraign some one fact or individual as the impelling
cause of his wrong, rather than the various circumstances that led to
it. To his simple mind it was made patent that the "Blue Mass Company"
were making money out of a mine which he claimed, and which was not yet
adjudged to them. Every dollar they took out was a fresh count in
this general indictment. Every delay towards this adjustment of
rights--although made by his own lawyer--was a personal wrong. The mere
fact that there never was nor had been any quid pro quo for this immense
property--that it had fallen to him for a mere song--only added zest
to his struggle. The possibility of his losing this mere speculation
affected him more strongly than if he had already paid down the million
he expected to get from the mine. I don't know that I have indicated as
plainly as I might that universal preference on the part of mankind to
get something from nothing, and to acquire the largest return for
the least possible expenditure, but I question my right to say that
Roscommon was much more reprehensible than his fellows.

But it told upon him as it did upon all over whom the spirit of the
murdered Concho brooded,--upon all whom avarice alternately flattered
and tortured. From his quiet gains in his legitimate business, from the
little capital accumulated through industry and economy, he lavished
thousands on this chimera of his fancy. He grew grizzled and worn over
his self-imposed delusion; he no longer jested with his customers,
regardless of quality or station or importance; he had cliques to
mollify, enemies to placate, friends to reward. The grocery suffered;
through giving food and lodgment to clouds of unimpeachable witnesses
before the Land Commission and the District Court, "Mrs. Ros." found
herself losing money. Even the bar failed; there was a party of
"Blue Mass" employees who drank at the opposite fonda, and cursed the
Roscommon claim over the liquor. The calm, mechanical indifference with
which Roscommon had served his c