“I don’t need to tell you, Curt,” he said in a tone rich with earnest feeling, “how grateful I am for all you’ve done for me, nor how well I know at what cost to yourself you’ve done it. You’ve been father and mother and brother and best friend to me all in one. If I ever do anything worth while the credit will be yours quite as much as mine. You know I’m not ungrateful or unappreciative, don’t you, Curt? I can understand how this thing has come to obsess you, since you’ve explained how it took root in your mind before your ethical ideas were settled. But I can’t sympathize with you in this search after vengeance, and I can’t approve of what you are planning to do. It seems to me you ought to be able to see things straight by this time and shake off your obsession. If you want to find the man and hand him over to the proper authorities—that’s all right; I’d help you in that myself; it’s right that he should be punished and made to give up what he has to his creditors. But to take revenge into your own hands, Curt, and to take it at the cost of everything desirable for yourself—why, the thing is so mad that it bewilders me to think it’s you that’s doing it. I wish I could persuade you to give it up.”
Curtis shook his head emphatically. “You needn’t waste your breath, Homer. I rather hoped you’d understand better how I feel about it, and see the whole affair a little more as it looks to me. But you’re different; and if you can’t, you can’t, and that’s all there is about it. But it’s useless to try to persuade me to give up my plans. A thing that you’ve thought about and dreamt about and planned and worked for through fifteen years gets to be part of your very blood, my boy, and it’s not so easily cast aside.”
“Well,” said Homer, “you are you; and if you’ve got to do this thing I suppose it can’t be helped.” He paused, thinking intently. “But when you go North next week—if one of those men proves to be Delafield—you won’t—at once—” He stumbled over his words, unable to put his brother’s purpose into plain speech.
Curtis took up his meaning. “No; not immediately. I’ve got to come home again first.”
“Then you’ll be back here before you do anything? That’s sure, is it, Curt?” asked Homer, relief in his voice.
“Yes; sure. I’ve got some important business that I promised the Castletons I’d attend to the week after, and I’ll take no chances till I get that fixed up for them.”
The next morning there was a promise of rain in the air and the sky. A dome of pale, bright gray, resting on murky supports of cloud, had taken the place of the usual heaven of vivid blue. But the wind, blowing warm and strong from the west, bore little moisture upon its wings, and the air was laden with an electric tingle that stretched and jarred unaccustomed nerves.
Hank Peters and José Gonzalez were working in the corral when Curtis Conrad came across from the door of his room to give them some directions. Presently he asked if they or any of the boys had seen anything lately of the gray wolf that had skulked about the neighborhood earlier in the season. Nosey Ike, they said, had seen it only the day before in the second draw on the road toward Golden.
“He did?” exclaimed Curtis. “I’m going to Golden to-day, and perhaps I can get a crack at it. I’ll be home by six o’clock, Peters, and I want to talk with you to-night about some work at Adobe Springs to-morrow. But to-day’s Sunday, boys, and we’ve come finally where we can stop and take breath once a week. You fellows can do anything you like to-day.”
Peters thought he’d sleep all day, for he hadn’t caught up since the barbecue; but José wanted to visit a Mexican family who had a little ranch beside a spring on the road to Golden.