"Easy when you go about it right. I've got it whittled to a hair trigger. Touch it and away she comes. You want to clap your claws on Pullar. Here is your chance to sink 'em deep. That four hundred bushels of Red Knight means more to old Ed. Pullar than his farm, stock and the whole works. He's doting on it. That makes it mean still more to Ned. Here is your chance to hand Pullar and Son a dizzy one."
Sykes paused a moment while he took a long drink. McClure pondered the proposition with a face that grew craftier the longer he simmered. His cogitations were suspended suddenly, however, by an innovation in the features of his companion. The pull of liquor had provoked immediate result, altering Sykes' countenance and causing a sudden expansion of his confidence. With his face overspread by a secretive leer he leaned closer and whispered:
"I haven't let it loose before, Rob, but I have red-hot grudge against your friend Pullar. That party has cut into my trail three or four times in as many years. We've locked horns before but the breaks went to him. His luck takes a sag to-night. There are three ways we can beat him up. We can get him through the old man in the way we've been figuring. This would cripple him for fair, but we've got to wait for our chance. It will come. The next best bet is a raid on The Red Knight. This thing is bigger than you are reckoning. Relieve him of this bunch of seed wheat and what have we done? We take forty thousand dollars out of his pocket and smother the one big howl of the old man's life. I am for putting over this surprise right off the bat."
He paused. McClure waited patiently.
"Go on," said Rob. "Give us your third bullet. It may do the trick alone. What is it?"
At the query Sykes' face changed in a manner that surprised even his hardened colleague. The unscrupulous plotter became a fiend repulsively malicious. From his eyes shot a jealous malignity, while upon every muscle of his face outcropped the pure depravity of hate. The mask had inadvertently slipped. Instinctively Sykes caught himself and replaced it. As McClure continued to search his face he realized that his companion was wearing his usual inscrutable smile. He could scarcely believe that the fiendish thing had disclosed itself.
"Never mind number three," said Sykes. "This is not a good time to consider it. It will be useful later."
McClure looked at him askance. The fellow possessed a knowledge that baffled him. A vague uneasiness crept into his mind, a premonition warning him of the man. Sykes realized that he had jeopardized matters not a little and exercised all his congenial graces to destroy the effect on the mind of his companion. He turned adroitly to levity and the flask and very soon they were on the old footing of boon companionship.
"We must get hold of The Red Knight," said McClure, swinging suddenly in line under the spell of the odorous whiskey. "And the sooner, the better."
"To-night!" announced Sykes with a fierce shutting of his jaws.