“I don’t blame you for looking that way,” said Vittum. “If Latisan had been driven to get that dam to-day you would have lost your drive for the canal; and, before God and your directors, you would have been responsible!”
When Latisan came out of the fog he had put away, somewhere, the sack which had held destruction.
When he had gone away from them, entering upon the perils of his undertaking, he was calm and resolute. Now that he was back, a champion who had prevailed single-handed, he was pale, trembling, and broken; they did not understand, at first.
Lida came with him, trying to soothe him, pleading and protesting; he constantly muttered broken speech and seemed to be trying to control a mood that was half frenzy. He left her and stumbled across the open space to Craig.
“Everything else you have done—it’s nothing as bad as this last. You sent her where you didn’t dare to go yourself. Good God! you Comas sneak, I ought to kill you where you sit! For all you cared you were making me a murderer of an innocent girl!”
“You had to be stopped. She went before I knew what she was going to do.”
“And if she hadn’t gone on her own account you would have tried to hire her to do it! It’s always a case of what you can buy with your money—that’s your style, Craig. Now you’re up against something you can’t buy. I’m still working alone—understand that? If you want to report me as an outlaw, go ahead! I’m giving you squarer warning than you gave me on the Tomah when you smashed the Latisans. If I smash that dam down there I’ll be smashing you! I’ll do it if you put as much as a toothpick in the way of the independent drives. I’ll blow the bottom out of your canal, in the bargain. And if you think you or your gang can locate me over there”—he pointed in the direction of the hills of the watershed between the rivers basins—“try it! I know every hole in those hills. I’ll keep bombing your drives till you can’t keep a man on the job. That’s the kind of an outlaw I am from now on.”
“It’s between us now, Latisan. I’ll own up to it. It has come to that.”
“Yes, it’s between renegades. I’m admitting that I’m one,” retorted Ward.
Craig stood up. If there was any of the spirit of Three C’s bluster left in him he was concealing it successfully.