“Do you mean a summer resort?”
“Yes, something on that order.”
He smiled. “I was discussing with Harrison, Quintell’s secretary, some weeks ago, the possibility of starting such an enterprise. He seemed interested—enthusiastic, I might say. I believe we mentioned your father’s ranch as one of the sites. Of course, you understand, we were just speculating. While a resort would be a veritable mint once it got going, the initial investment would be prohibitive so far as I’m concerned. Why do you ask?”
Dot’s eyes glowed on him. “Mr. Merriman, if I entertained any doubts as to whether Quintell had a hand in last night’s outrage, you have dispelled them,” she said. Thereupon, she related to him the particulars of Dick Lennox’s visit to her and Lemuel at the Golden West Hotel in San Francisco.
They were still talking when Lex returned. He announced that he had dispatched a machine to bring Mrs. Liggs to camp, and instructed the driver to tell Warburton—in the event the latter was at the ranch—that Dot wished to see him immediately. Moreover, he had sent a cowboy riding for Blue Mud Springs, with a letter counseling Lemuel to remain in hiding, as well as requesting Warburton’s presence in Geerusalem.
While Dot and Lex were at breakfast in the hotel dining room, six horsemen rode singly out of camp. They were armed. They were old in the game of hip-shooting—practiced in the grim art of killing. They could keep a can dancing in midair as long as loaded six-shooters held out. In the pocket of each was a neat little roll of bills, slipped there by Jule Quintell’s right bower, Harrison. Their instructions were to seize the hill on the Huntington ranch, destroy the location monuments and notices on what were known as the Billy Geerusalem group of claims—locators, Tinnemaha Pete Boyd and Jerome Liggs—and relocate over their own signatures.
Reposing in Quintell’s safe in the Broker’s Exchange Building were deeds signed in advance by the six, which transferred what they intended to get possession of to the boss of Geerusalem and his associates. The deep motive beneath this move, however, was the death of Jerome Liggs and Tinnemaha Pete. That Dot’s father escaped a similar sentence was due, not entirely to Quintell’s hesitation to take so rash a step, as to the fact that, after hearing the report of the vigilantes’ work as given by Big George Rankin, the broker—following a furious scene in his office—had arrived at the conclusion that the havoc wrought at the ranch coupled with the terror with which Huntington and his daughter must be now inspired, sufficed to force them into a position to meet his terms for the purchase of the ranch.
But of his contemplated cold-blooded murder of the discoverers of the rich Billy Geerusalem strike, Quintell said nothing to his associates. Their putting away had nothing directly to do with this obvious act of dispossession. As has been said, Huntington owned the land on which the bonanza find had been made; the broker knew this and, in consequence, realized only too well that legal right to it must come from its owner, who, it must be remembered, had not the remotest idea of the fabulous treasure buried in the bleak, solitary hill west of his home.
Meanwhile, Quintell was busy stirring up public sentiment in the camp against Huntington. He had called a meeting the night before and charged that Billy Gee, the outlaw, had been found in hiding on the Huntington ranch. While he had not seen the bandit, Quintell gave a graphic account of an exciting chase after that elusive person, which had terminated when Sheriff Warburton mistook him for Billy Gee in the darkness, and dragged him into the house, resulting in the outlaw’s escape.
His whole story was a clever network of lies, convincingly told, and calculated to brand Dot’s father as an undesirable resident, if nothing worse; one who was scarcely as honest as Billy Gee, since Quintell made him appear as an accomplice who had been masquerading for years in the rôle of a reputable, law-abiding rancher. Moreover, he assailed Warburton by pointing to the latter’s friendship for Huntington, and intimated that Billy Gee’s sensational get-away from the sheriff, following Lemuel’s delivery of his prisoner to the official, was framed for the purpose of getting the reward which, he gave as his opinion, had been divided equally among the three. And because Quintell had a smooth tongue and a way of putting things over, Geerusalem believed his charges.