“I know there’s a big difference between us temperamentally; but I don’t believe that would keep me from appreciating your motive if it had any basis in right or expediency. Good God, Curt, look at the thing sensibly! Suppose you kill the man when you find him. What earthly good will that do you? You’d probably hang for it, or go to the penitentiary for years. And it seems to me the chance is all the other way. Whoever the man is, he must know you’re after him; and you’ll find him ready and loaded. If you’re not killed you’re likely to be badly wounded—perhaps lose an eye or a leg—and what can you gain by it? Bless me if I can see any use or sense or right in the whole business.”
Curtis Conrad rose and walked slowly and with bent head the length of the porch and back, his hand resting for an instant on his brother’s shoulder as he passed. He stood regarding abstractedly the lightning that was playing among some low-lying clouds above the Hatchet Mountains, far to the southwest. “One night, soon after father and mother died,” he began, in a tone so low that Homer could barely catch his words, “I lay awake almost all night, thinking. You were a little shaver barely out of kilts, the girls were young things with their dresses half way to their knees, and I was only fifteen. I had taken you into bed with me because I was afraid you’d wake up in the night and feel lonesome—and, perhaps, because I didn’t want to feel quite so lonesome myself. I made plans for hours about how we could get along and the things I meant to do. You tossed in your sleep, and threw one of your hands against mine. My fingers closed over it, and you gripped one of them fast. Somehow, that grip went to my heart, and I promised myself and you that I would do all I could to make up to you the loss we had suffered. I thought of what father had planned for me; and I knew that I should have to give all that up. As I thought of the man who had robbed us of everything—money, opportunity, father and mother—I trembled with anger.
“I had never used an oath until that night. But I sat on the side of my bed, when I couldn’t lie still any longer, and clenched my fists and cursed him, mildly at first and under my breath, then aloud and in the reddest language I could think of. As I damned his soul to the hottest corner of hell it seemed to me that he ought to be made to suffer in this life, too, and I said aloud, ‘I would like to kill you!’ The words sounded so plain that they frightened me. But I said them over again, and the next moment the thought leaped up, ‘And I will, too, if I live!’ That was how the idea was born in my mind. It struck root and grew, and I’ve held to it ever since.”
Homer nodded. “Yes; I can understand how you would hold to a thing you’d made up your mind to do; I’d hold on just the same way. We’ve both got the bull-dog grip; it’s one of the Conrad characteristics. But even a bull-dog can let go when he knows he shouldn’t hold on any longer.”
Curtis smiled grimly. “Not always; sometimes you have to pry his jaws loose. Nevertheless, I could let go if I wanted to. But I don’t want to, and I don’t propose to. The thing has become part of my life, of me, of my very blood.”
“Have you been working at it all this time, Curt?”
“Oh, of course I couldn’t do much while I was a boy except to think and brood over it. But during that time I learned all I could about Delafield, his schemes, and his personality. I read every newspaper I could lay hold of that had anything in it about him; I’ve got them all yet. But I didn’t do much in the way of actually chasing him down until after the girls were married ten years ago. After that I earned and saved more money, and was free to go about as I wanted. Since then I’ve spent all the time and money I could spare in hunting him.
“I had a schoolmate named Littleton who became a detective when he grew up. We were good friends, and when he happened to find out that I was nosing around in my own way he offered to help me. I was to pay him what I could, and he would put in time on this when he had nothing else to do. Between us we tracked Delafield all over the West and into Canada, back and forth, and under nearly a dozen different names. I don’t think he got as much money out of his Boston smash as he was charged with taking, but he got a good lot; and he’s since made and lost two or three good-sized fortunes. Most of the time he has been a mining expert, and has owned and dealt in mines; the fact that he’s stuck pretty close to that business has made it easier to follow him. Once, in Arizona, we lost the trail completely. It was as if the earth had opened and swallowed him; for a while we thought he must be dead. Later we discovered his tracks in Utah, under a new name. Since then there have been several gaps of that sort; but we’ve always managed to light on him again after a while.
“My last knowledge of him is that he is living somewhere in this Territory, a well-to-do and respected citizen, prominent in politics, and a supporter of Dellmey Baxter for Congress. The rest of it will be easy; there’ll be a quick chase and an early show-down before there’s time for another deal. I’ve got my eye on two men, both of whom fit that description. They live up North, and I’m going up to Albuquerque and Santa Fe next week to look up their records. If it’s either one of them, Delafield will meet his deserts before he’s many days older.”
Silence fell upon them. Curtis leaned against a pillar of the porch and watched the clouds rising higher over the mountains. “It looks as if the rainy season is about to begin at last,” he said in a matter-of-fact way. Homer rose and stood with a hand on his shoulder. They looked so much alike in the moonlight that at a little distance it would have been difficult to say which was the younger and which the elder brother.