“And I’ve got my common sense, too!” retorted the sheriff. He started away.
“So have I,” agreed the attorney, a lawyer who had obeyed a telegram and had joined the Craig expedition at the shire town of the county the night before.
“There’s an injunction!” stormed the field director.
“And there’s a lunatic with a sack of dynamite.” The lawyer crooked his arm across his face; a missile from the white void had splashed near by and water sprayed him. “You have told me that Latisan is no longer in Flagg’s service. I’m not depending now on law, Mr. Craig, I’m depending on my legs.”
He fled on the trail of the officer. But he left a pregnant thought in Craig’s mind: Latisan was not an employee of Echford Flagg. As a matter of fact, Craig owned to himself—his clarity of vision persisting in that time of overwhelming disaster, in the wreck of the hopes built on the power of his money—that the thing had now become almost wholly a personal, guerrilla warfare between himself and Latisan; and when the truth came out, if the matter were forced to that issue, Craig would lack the backing of authority fully as much as Latisan lacked it then, in his assault on property. The bluff of the guns had not worked! Craig was realizing that in hiring such men, as he had on the spur of the moment, his rage instead of his business good judgment had prevailed.
There were the repeated warnings of his superiors! The law would be obliged to investigate if Skulltree dam were wrecked, and would probe to the bottom of the moving reasons! Scandal, rank scandal! Craig could behold President Horatio Marlow as he sat that day with upraised, monitory forefinger, urging the touchy matter of credits and reputation. Craig could hear Dawes, the attorney: “That talk puts the thing up to you square-edged!”
Down from the mist-shrouded cliff was advancing a vengeful man who walked with the footsteps of thunder.
As Craig had looked ahead, basing his judgment on his experience with men and matters, it had seemed an easy matter to guard Skulltree with money and law. But in this astounding sortie of Latisan’s, Comas money was of no use and Craig was developing an acute fear of the law which, invoked, would take matters into court. Over and over, his alarmed convictions pounded on his caution.
He crouched under a rain of dirt and pebbles—then he ran away.
When he reached the far shore he jumped into a bateau that was pulled up there. With all the power of his lungs he yelled for rowers. He was obliged to confess loudly and unreservedly that he was giving up the fight—was seeking a way of stopping Latisan—before any of his men would come from the shelter of woods and fog and serve him.