“There’s no need of saying anything,” he said, looking away. “I don’t want to hear any thanks.”
“I was left there to die—tied up there and left to die by a crazy fool that tried to blackmail me—that’s it, tried to blackmail me. And I’ll put him where he belongs. It was the most infernal plot ever put up on a man. Blackmail and murder!” He gabbled his charges hysterically. The shock of his experience had unmanned him. “You can’t blackmail a man like me without suffering for it. I’ll put him into the deepest hole in the insane asylum—with a gag in his mouth.” He was going on to relate his experience, but Wade again interrupted him.
“I won’t bother you to tell it, Mr. Barrett,” he said, coldly. “I know how it happened. Mr. Withee told me this morning.”
“It’s all lies and blackmail!” screamed Barrett, his fury rising at thought of this gossip. “Withee is against me, too. I told him I’d take his stumpage contract away, and this is how he is getting back. I’ll have him and his whole crew in jail for blackmail if he doesn’t shut his yawp.”
A roar of thunder drowned his voice, and he stood, with the rain pelting on him, shaking his fists above his head. But by the twist of his mouth Wade saw that he was still cursing “blackmail.”
The sight angered him. In as insulting a passion had John Barrett railed at him, Dwight Wade, when he had asked for the hand of John Barrett’s daughter. The man had tossed his arms in the same way when he called Wade “a beggar of a school-master.”
“Don’t call it blackmail and murder—not to me, Mr. Barrett,” he said, harshly.
“Don’t you know it’s blackmail and a put-up job to ruin me?” roared the timber baron.
Wade stood up now and faced him. Torrents of rain beat upon them, and they took no heed; for the face of the young man was working with a mighty emotion and the features of the other man showed that sudden fear had come upon him.