“But how can they prove their claim now?” Westy was all interest. “Mitchell stole the paper that was all the witness Redmond had, didn’t he?”
“That’s the interesting thing. Mitchell with all his antagonism and prejudice against the Indians and which he took out on John Redmond all his life must have had a troubled conscience.
“At all events, it is whispered around Santa Fe and, in fact, some one said it was in the Santa Fe paper at the time, that when old Paul Mitchell died he willed a certain sealed envelope to his son.
“In it was a document and the envelope was never to be opened during his son’s life nor his son’s lifetime. But the first son or daughter of his grandson was to open the sealed envelope on the event of their twenty-first birthday, and it hasn’t been opened yet. They know nothing of the Redmonds at all, I believe.”
“He must have been crazy!” Rip piped up shrilly.
“Not crazy, Rip,” his uncle answered. “Just an eccentric, prejudiced, old man who let hate grow like a weed in his life, obliterating honor and everything else that’s worth while.”
“Why,” asked Billy, perplexed, “didn’t he want that envelope opened until his great-grandson’s maturity? And what makes you think it has something to do with Redmond?”
“Because I think the ingenious old scoundrel figured that the Indian strain would be about faded out in this generation. You see? He wanted his hate to live after him until the Indian was almost forgotten and the race was deteriorating. I may be wrong, but I don’t think so.”
“Where,” Westy asked Mr. Wilde, “do they keep the envelope?”
“In their home, I believe.”