“I guess,” she said and her words were very low and soft, “I’ll love him so long as I live—though I hate myself for doing it. He wearied of me and forgot me—but I can’t do likewise.”
Then her chin came up and her voice rang with a quiet finality.
“But I want the truth ... the whole truth without any softening.”
“Then as I see it, it’s simply this. A war was on between two groups of financiers. American Oil and Gas had held a monopoly and maintained a corrupt control in the legislature that stifled competition. That’s why the other oil boom failed. The second group was trying to slip up on these corruptionists and gain the control by a campaign of surprise. Jack Spurrier appears to have been the ambassador of that second group—and he seems to have failed.”
The wife nodded. Even yet she unconsciously held a brief for his defense.
“So far as you’ve gone,” she reminded her father, “you show him to have been what is commonly called a ‘practical business man’—but no worse than the men he fought.”
Cappeze bowed his head gravely and his next words came reluctantly. “So far, yes. Of course he could have done none of the things he did had he not first won the confidence of those poor ignorant folk that are our neighbors and our friends. Of course it was because they believed in him and followed his counsel that they sold their birthrights to men with whom he pretended to have no connection—and yet who took their orders from him.”
“Then,” Glory started, halted and leaned forward with her hands against her breast and her utterance was the monotone of a voice forced to a hard question: “Then what I feared was true? He lived among us and made friends of us—only to rob us?”
“If by ‘us’ you mean the mountain people, I fear me that’s precisely what he did. I can see no other explanation. Which ever of these two groups won meant to exploit and plunder us.”