She saw his lips come together in straight lines.
“Poor Larry. You knew he died, Miss Harlan?”
“Mullarky told me.” The girl’s eyes moistened. “And I should like to know something about him—how he lived after—after he left home; whether he was happy—all about him. You see, Mr. Taylor, I loved him!”
“And Larry Harlan loved his daughter,” said Taylor softly.
He began to tell her of her father; how several years before Harlan had come to him, seeking employment; how Larry and himself had formed a friendship; how they had gone together in search of the gold that Larry claimed to have discovered in the Sangre de Christo Mountains; of the injury Larry had suffered, and how the man had died while he himself had been taking him toward civilization and assistance.
During the recital, however, one thought dominated him, reddening his face with visible evidence of the sense of guilt that had seized him. He must deliberately lie to the daughter of the man who had been his friend.
In his pocket at this instant was Larry’s note to him, in which the man had expressed his fear of fortune-hunters. Taylor remembered the exact words:
Marion will have considerable money and I don’t want no sneak to get hold of it—like the sneak that got hold of the money my wife had, that I saved. There’s a lot of them around. If Marion is going to fall in with one of that kind, I’d rather she wouldn’t get what I leave; the man would get it away from her. Use your own judgment and I’ll be satisfied.
And Taylor’s judgment was that Carrington and Parsons were fortune-hunters; that if they discovered the girl to be entitled to a share of the money that had been received from the sale of the mine, they would endeavor to convert it to their own use. And Taylor was determined they should not have it.
The conversation he had overheard in the dining-car had convinced him of their utter hypocrisy and selfishness; it had aroused in him a feeling of savage resentment and disgust that would not permit him to transfer a cent of the money to the girl as long as they held the slightest influence over her.