The man laughed. "Well," he said, "keep stringin' him along until we get ready to lift the idol from its hidin' place. I've been thinkin' that it'd be a good idea to take the durn thing over to Las Vegas an' sell it. The money we'd get for it would be safer in the bank than the idol where it is. An' we could take it out when we get ready."
"No," said Betty firmly; "we will leave the idol where it is. No one but me knows, and I certainly will not tell."
"You're the boss," said the man. He laughed again, and then both voices became inaudible to Calumet.
A cold, deadly rage seized Calumet. Betty was deceiving him, trifling with him. Some plan that she had in mind with reference to him was working smoothly and well, so successfully that her confederate—for certainly the man in the room with her must be that—was distinctly pleased. Betty, to use the man's words, was "stringing" him. In other words, she was making a fool of him!
Those half-formed good resolutions which Calumet had made a few minutes before entering the house had fled long ago; he snarled now as he realized what a fool he had been for making them. Betty had been leading him on. He had been under the spell of her influence; he had been allowing her to shape his character to her will; he was, or had been, in danger of becoming a puppet which she could control by merely pulling some strings. She had been working on his better nature with selfish aims.
Who was the man? Malcolm? Dade? He thought not; the voice sounded strangely like Neal Taggart's. This suspicion enraged him, and he stepped back, intending to hurl himself against the door in an effort to smash it in. But he hesitated, leered cunningly at the door, and then softly and swiftly made his way upstairs.
He went first to his own room, for he half suspected that it might be Dade who was downstairs with Betty, and if it was— Well, just now he remembered vividly how Dade had defied him, and he made a mental vow that if it were Dade who was with Betty the young man would leave the Lazy Y before dawn quite suddenly. But it was not Dade. Dade was in bed, snoring, stretched out comfortably.
Calumet slipped out of the room and went to Malcolm's. Both Bob and Malcolm were sound asleep. He hesitated for an instant, and then made his way slowly downstairs. Again he listened at the door. Betty and the man were still talking.
Calumet found his boots. He decided not to put them on until he got to the kitchen door, for he was determined to go around the outside of the house and lay in wait for Betty's confederate, and he did not want to make any sound that would scare him off. He was proceeding stealthily, directing his course through the darkness by a stream of moonlight that came in through one of the kitchen windows, and had almost reached the kitchen door when his feet struck an obstruction—something soft and yielding.
There was a sudden scurrying, a sharp, terrified yelp.