ies, and the other two men stood behind. Kurt could not make out the
meaning of the low voices. Pressing closer to the freight-car, he
cautiously and noiselessly advanced.

Glidden was importuning with expressive hands and swift, low utterance.
His face gleamed dark, hard, strong, intensely strung with corded,
quivering muscles, with eyes apparently green orbs of fire. He spoke in
German.

Kurt dared not go closer unless he wanted to be discovered, and not yet
was he ready for that. He might hear some word to help explain his
father's strange, significant intimations about Anderson.

"...must--have--money," Glidden was saying. To Kurt's eyes treachery
gleamed in that working face. Neuman bent over to whisper gruffly in
Dorn's ear. One of the silent men standing rubbed his hands together.
Old Dorn's head was bowed. Then Glidden spoke so low and so swiftly that
Kurt could not connect sentences, but with mounting blood he stood
transfixed and horrified, to gather meaning from word on word, until he
realized Anderson's doom, with other rich men of the Northwest, was
sealed--that there were to be burnings of wheat-fields and of
storehouses and of freight-trains--destruction everywhere.

"I give money," said old Dorn, and with heavy movement he drew from
inside his coat a large package wrapped in newspaper. He laid it before
him in the light and began to unwrap it. Soon there were disclosed two
bundles of bills--the eighty thousand dollars.

Kurt thrilled in all his being. His poor father was being misled and
robbed. A melancholy flash of comfort came to Kurt! Then at sight of
Glidden's hungry eyes and working face and clutching hands Kurt pulled
his hat far down, drew his revolver, and leaped forward with a yell,
"Hands up!"

He discharged the revolver right in the faces of the stunned plotters,
and, snatching up the bundle of money, he leaped over the light,
knocking one of the men down, and was gone into the darkness, without
having slowed in the least his swift action.

Wheeling round the end of the freight-car, he darted back, risking a
hard fall in the darkness, and ran along the several cars to the first
one, where he grasped his rifle and kept on. He heard his father's roar,
like that of a mad bull, and shrill yells from the other men. Kurt
laughed grimly. They would never catch him in the dark. While he ran he
stuffed the money into his inside coat pockets. Beyond the railroad
station he slowed down to catch