She has met a man at last.
Her bosom heaves with pride, her eyes beam on rough old Joe. Woods has taken out an unusually long cigar. He lights it at the door, and leisurely proceeds to smoke it on the upper veranda.
When his foot-fall dies away, Hardin essays to speak. His lips are strangely dry. He mutters something, and the words fail him. Natalie interrupts, with scorn: "Curse you and your money, you cowardly thief. You have met your match at last. I trusted to your honor. Your hands were on my throat just now. I have but one word to say to you now. Go, face that man out there!" Hardin is in a blind rage.
His legal vocabulary finds no ready phrase of adieu. His foot is on the top stair. Joe Woods says carelessly:
"Judge, you and I had better have a little talk to-night." Ah, his enemy! He knows him at last. Hardin hoarsely mutters: "Where? when?"
"When you please," says Woods.
"Ten, to-night; your room. I'll bring a friend with me." Hardin nods, and passes on, crossing the square to his hotel. He must have time for thought; for new plans; for revenge; yes, bloody revenge.
Colonel Joseph Woods spends an hour in conference with Peyton and Father Fran‡ois. Their plans are all finished.
Judge Davis, who is paralyzed by the vehemence of California character, caresses his educated whiskers. He pets his eye-glasses, while the three gentlemen confer. He is essentially a man of peace. He fears he may become merely a "piece of man" in case the appeal to revolvers, or mob law, is brought into this case. They do things differently in New York.
While the two lovely girls are using every soothing art of womanly sympathy to care for Natalie, it begins to dawn upon each of them that their futures are strangely interlinked. The presence of Madame de Santos seals their lips. They long for the hour when they can converse in private. They know now that the redoubtable Joe Woods has TWO fatherless girls to protect instead of ONE.