“Why not?”
So the Queer Questioner’s battle-cry!
Lightly though he laughed, he was heavy with hate, again moved by that battleful mania which is the sanity of love. To him specific insults did not matter so much. The importance of the whys, wheres or whences grew all at once negligible. To have it out with the man who contested his claim to his woman—to bring him down just on general principles—to wring him and rend him and trample him, if need be, into acknowledgment of his supreme impertinence—that was his present task.
A thought-flash of the moment before had thrown rays of suspicion several ways through Pape’s mind. Mills Harford knew of the Montana Gusher swindle, as indicated by his jibe of that morning about an “oil-stock shark.” Being a real-estater of considerable success, he might be a principal in that fraud. Certainly he did not seem the man to have been a victim.
The idea that this “most prominent” suitor of Jane might be the leader of the anti-Lauderdales was suggested by his bold attempt to deter the girl from further investigation. That she herself considered him a friend was in itself significant. He could not better have covered in perpetrating an inimical act toward her than by first having won her confidence with flattery as expertly administered as though he were indeed one of those villainous “perfect lovers” with whom honest heroes have to cope on stage and screen.
As an intimate of the household, Harford probably was in position to know the worth of the late eccentric’s buried “bone.” He might well have instigated that “inside” safe job at the Sturgis’ and been responsible for the trailing of the poke-bonnet lady to the East Sixty-third Street hide-out, this last particularly pointed by his later appearance there with his lawyer. And here in the glen, just as the out-croppings showed plain the way to treasure’s lead, he was ready to prevent Jane by force from continuing her park prospecting while the excavations were underway on the heights. All the circumstantials were suspicious.
Why not now? In view of possibilities, it had not taken one of Pape’s predisposition for action long to decide that the then and there were none too soon for adjustment of their relative status. He and his self-selected could spare time, he guessed, for a bout that would settle—well, what it would settle.
“Climb down. Let’s get it over before some ladylike rule of this old-woman town of yours trips us up.”
Pape was in the act of dismounting, in accordance with his own suggestion, when Harford executed a surprise that nearly crowded him to a fall. The attack was abetted by the inherent hostility of a thoroughbred horse for cross-breeds of the range. As though trained for just such participation, the blue-blood rammed into the piebald, bringing his rider within tempting reach of the enemy ear. A whack more dizzying than dangerous followed the equine impact.
“So that’s—the game?” Pape gasped during his recovery. “You’ve got—edge on me—with your—polo punch. But swords or pistols! I’m ready for—any old fight that’s fought—Harfy dar-rling.”