“Not if I know it!” cried Dalton. “This Sleeman is a robber. By Jove! I’ll make him cut down this thing to bare bones before I’m through with him. No fifteen thousand dollars of mortgage money for him—the old skinflint! He takes a mortgage for fifteen thousand, pays your father ten thousand, keeping five thousand back for interest. Ten per cent., prepaid! Oh, we’ll get him. Then, there’s a bundle of I O U’s which he holds, nearly two thousand dollars more, which I suspect have been already met, if your father’s red book is correct, and it has every mark of being a most exact record. I say, Paul! What about paying what you can on this mortgage and having the rest transferred to the company and getting the thing out of this robber’s hands?”
“Could that be done, Dalton?”
“Sure, it can be done. I’ll see Tussock about it.”
CHAPTER XXV
By the end of the fifth day the two young men were nearing the end of their ride through the Windermere Valley. They had made the trip in leisurely fashion, for the weather was superb and every hour was one of supreme delight; furthermore, their mounts, secured from a livery barn at Golden, were none of the best. As the sun was making toward the horizon the riders topped the crest of a long incline, from which the lofty tops of the fir trees of Pine Croft could be seen.
“Hold up, Dalton,” cried Paul. “There among the firs is Pine Croft, and your eyes are resting upon the finest bit of mountain scenery in all British Columbia; my father, who had seen the best, used to say the finest in the world.”
Dalton sat entranced. His vocabulary of wonder and admiration had long ago been exhausted.
“I wish I had saved up a big adjective or two,” he said. “Your father must have been right, for anything finer is beyond my powers of imagination.”
“Pine Croft Ranch sweeps up over those hills on the left,” said Paul, “and about five miles down the river. Every mile, every yard, is dear to me, how dear I never knew till this moment. Do you wonder I love it?”
“Paul,” said Dalton slowly, “I’d spend my last dollar if necessary in helping you to redeem it. We will get that old robber and make him come through. Never fear.”