But he nodded thoughtfully at the slowly fading strata of shaded colors splashed across the sky.
"A man can get away with it for keeps . . . if he plays the game right. Jim Galloway isn't that man and so I'll get him. He has ignored the first necessary principle, which is the lone hand."
"You mean he takes men into his confidence?"
"And he goes on and ignores the second necessary principle; a man must stop short of murder. If he turns gangman and killer, he ties his own rope around his neck. If a man like Galloway, a man with brains, power, without fear, without scruple, should decide to loot this corner of the world or any other corner, and set about it right, playing the lone hand invariably, he would be a man I couldn't bring in in a thousand years. But Galloway has slipped up; he has too many Moragas and Antones and Vidals at his heels; he has been the cause, directly or indirectly, of too many killings. . . . A theft will be forgotten in time, the hue and cry die down; spilled blood cries to heaven after ten years."
"Galloway is back in San Juan."
"I know. I wanted him back. I wanted him free and unhampered. He'll be bolder than ever now, won't he, if this case is dropped? He's come out a little into the open already, he'll be tempted out a little farther. There'll be more of his work soon, a robbery here or there, and he will grow so sure of himself that he'll get careless. Then I'll get him."
"But have you the right?" she asked quickly. "Knowing him a lawbreaker, have you the right to allow him to go farther and farther, just because in the end you hope to get him?"
He met her look with a smile which puzzled her.
"I'll answer your question when you define right and wrong for me," he said quietly.
They grew silent together, watching the gradual sinking of day into twilight and early dusk. Norton, for all his vaunted ravings, had grown thoughtful; Virginia turning her eyes toward him while his were staring out beyond the house-tops saw in them a look of deep, frowning speculation. And through this look, like a little fire gleaming through a fog, was another look whose meaning baffled her.