. Ranch after ranch
he's gained by taking up and foreclosing mortgages. He's against labor.
He grinds down the poor. He cheated Neuman out of a hundred thousand
bushels of wheat. He bought up my debt. He meant to ruin me. He--"

"You're talking I.W.W. rot," whispered Kurt, shaking with the effort to
subdue his feelings. "Anderson is fine, big, square--a developer of the
Northwest. Not an enemy! He's our friend. Oh! if only you had an
American's eyes, just for a minute!... Father, I want that money for
Anderson."

"My son, I run my own business," replied Dorn, sullenly, with a pale
fire in his opaque eyes. "You're a wild boy, unfaithful to your blood.
You've fallen in love with an American girl.... Anderson says he needs
money!"... With hard, gloomy face the old man shook his head. "He thinks
he'll harvest!" Again that strange shake of finality. "I know what I
know.... I keep my money.... We'll have other rule.... I keep my money."

Kurt had vibrated to those most significant words and he stared
speechless at his father.

"Go home. Get ready for harvest," suddenly ordered old Dorn, as if he
had just awakened to the fact of Kurt's disobedience in lingering here.

"All right, father," replied Kurt, and, turning on his heel, he strode
outdoors.

When he got beyond the light he turned and went back to a position where
in the dark he could watch without being seen. His father and the hotel
proprietor were again engaged in earnest colloquy. Neuman had
disappeared. Kurt saw the huge shadow of a man pass across a drawn blind
in a room up-stairs. Then he saw smaller shadows, and arms raised in
vehement gesticulation. The very shadows were sinister. Men passed in
and out of the hotel. Once old Dorn came to the door and peered all
around. Kurt observed that there was a dark side entrance to this hotel.
Presently Neuman returned to the desk and said something to old Dorn,
who shook his head emphatically, and then threw himself into a chair, in
a brooding posture that Kurt knew well. He had seen it so often that he
knew it had to do with money. His father was refusing demands of some
kind. Neuman again left the office, this time with the proprietor. They
were absent some little time.

During this period Kurt leaned against a tree, hidden in the shadow,
with keen eyes watching and with puzzled, anxious mind. He had
determined, in case his father left that office with Neuman, on one of
those significant disappearances, to slip