“But all that in good time,” continued the Indian. “I must explain now how it came about that the rabbit, Donald Payne, is under the paw of the Indian fox.
“When Sheriff Burks described the criminal who escaped from the California penitentiary I saw a possible opportunity that promised me, Natachee, no little pleasure and satisfaction—an opportunity for which I have been waiting. Miss Hillgrove’s agitation, her going to you, and your own action, confirmed my opinion as to where the convict who had so far escaped the officers was to be found. But I realized that it might be well to learn more. Thinking it unwise to appear too interested before the sheriff, I went to Tucson—first making sure that you would be here when I returned. In the white man’s city, clothed properly in the white man’s costume, with careful white man’s manners, I was permitted to search the files of the white man’s newspapers, and, thanks to my white education, to read the shameful account of this escaped convict’s crime.
“I learned how Donald Payne, a promising young business man and a graduate of the California University, had held an important position of trust in a certain investment company. This company had been specifically planned and organized to attract the savings of small investors. Its appeal was to the better class of workmen, who out of their meager earnings were ambitious to put by something for the better education of their children—widows, with a little life insurance money upon the income of which they must exist—school-teachers, who must save against that dread day when they could no longer work—stenographers, clerks, and that class of poor whose education and tastes were above their earnings, and in whose hearts hope was kept alive by the promise of safe and honest returns from their hard-saved pennies. Every dollar in that institution of trust represented honest human effort and worthy ambition and heroic selfsacrifice.
“Oh, it was a white man’s enterprise, born of a white man’s devilish cunning, and carried out with a white man’s remorseless cruelty to its damnable end. When the people’s confidence had been won, and they had been persuaded to place enough of their savings in the hands of these spoilers to make it worth while, the company failed. The investors lost everything. The promoters—the principals of the company—gained everything. But Donald Payne, the brilliant young financial genius whose manipulation brought about the wreck, went to San Quentin prison.
“He had served eighteen months of his sentence when he escaped. His mother, a widow, brokenhearted over the shame and dishonor, scorned and ostracized by her neighbors and friends, humiliated by the cruel publicity, died in less than a month after her son was pronounced guilty. Donald Payne is without doubt the most hated, the most despised name in this decade.”
The man who, during the Indian’s deliberate recital, had sat cowering in his chair, raised his haggard face. His eyes were dull with anguish, his lips were drawn and white; but in spite of his ghastly appearance there was a strange air of dignity in his manner as he said hoarsely:
The Indian waited a little as if to give the greatest possible significance to his answer, then:
“No, not quite all. I know that this escaped convict, Donald Payne, has learned to love a woman. And I know that this woman loves this man, who is hiding from the officers who would send him back to prison.”
“Yes,” said the white man, hoarsely, “that is true. If it is any satisfaction to you, I confess my love for Marta Hillgrove. I have every reason to believe in her love for me, and—I—dare not—for her sake—tell her of my love.”