“I am going to answer you plainly, and I think an examination of Hetty’s cheque-book and the money she left behind will bear me out,” she said. “Once only did Hetty give Mr. Grant any dollars—fifty of them, I think, to feed some hungry children. He would not take them until she assured him that they were a part of a small annuity left her by her mother, and that not one of them came from you. I also know that Mr. Grant allowed his friends to suspect him of being bribed by you sooner than tell them where he obtained the dollars in question. The adventurer dealt most honourably with you. Your daughter twice disclosed your plans, once when Clavering had plotted Grant’s arrest, and again when had she not done so it would most assuredly have led to the destruction of the cattle-train. Mr. Clavering came near making a horrible blunder on that occasion, and but for Hetty’s warning not a head of your stock would have reached Omaha.”
Her tone carried conviction with it, as did the flash in her eyes, but Torrance’s smile was sardonic. “You would try to persuade me Larry saved the train out of goodwill to us?”
“He did it, knowing what it was going to cost him, to prevent the men he led starting on a course of outrage and lawlessness.”
“And they have paid him for it!”
“I fancy that is outside the question,” said Miss Schuyler. “Twice, when every good impulse that is in our kind laid her under compulsion, Hetty warned the man she loved, but at no other time did a word to your prejudice pass her lips; and if she had spoken it Grant would not have listened. Hetty was loyal, and he treated you with a fairness that none of you merited. You sent the Sheriff a bribe and an order for his arrest, and by inadvertence it fell into his hands. He brought it back here unopened at his peril.”
Torrance looked at her in astonishment. “He brought back my letter to the Sheriff?”
“Yes. There was nothing else a man of that kind could have done.”
Torrance stood silent for a space, and then, stooping, picked up a half-burnt paper from the hearth, glanced at it with a curious expression, and flung it into the embers. When it had charred away he turned to Miss Schuyler.
“You have shown yourself a good friend,” he said gravely. “Still, you may understand the other side of the question if you listen to me.”
He turned and pointed to an empty tin case, and the charred papers in the hearth. “That is the end of the plans of half a lifetime—and they were all for Hetty. I had no one else after her mother was taken from me, and I scraped the dollars together for her, that she should have what her heart could wish for, and the enjoyments her parents had never known; and while I did so I and the others built up the prosperity of the cattle country. We fed the railroads and built the towns, and when we would have rested, Larry and his friends took hold. You see what they have made of it—a great industry ruined, the country under martial law, its commerce crippled, and the proclamation that can only mean disaster to us hung out everywhere. My daughter turned against me—and nothing left me but to go out, a wanderer! Larry has done his work thoroughly, and you would have me make friends with him?”