“It’s the old trouble,” said Jake, when his master had settled himself. “The cattle ‘duffers.’ They’re gettin’ busy—busy around this ranch again.”
“Well?” Marbolt turned to Tresler; his action was a decided snub to Jake.
Tresler took his cue and began his story. He told it almost exactly as he had told it to Jake, but with one slight difference: he gave no undue emphasis to his presence in the vicinity of the house. And Marbolt listened closely, the frowning brows bespeaking his concentration, and his unmoving eyes his fixed attention. He listened apparently unmoved to every detail, and displayed a wonderful patience while Tresler went point for point over his arguments in favor of his suspicions of Anton. Once only he permitted his sightless glance to pass in Jake’s direction, and that was at the linking of the foreman’s name with Tresler’s suspicions. As his story came to an end the blind man rested one elbow on the table, and propped his chin upon his hand. The other hand coming into contact with a ruler lying adjacent, he picked it up and thoughtfully tapped the table, while the two men waited for him to speak.
At last he turned toward his foreman, and, with an impressive gesture, indicated Tresler.
“This story is nothing new to us, Jake,” he said. Then for a moment his voice dropped, and took on a pained tone. “I only wish it were; then we could afford to laugh at it. No, there can be no laughing here. Past experience has taught us that. It is a matter of the greatest seriousness—danger. So much for the main features. But there are side issues, suspicions you have formed,” turning back to Tresler, “which I cannot altogether accept. Mind, I do not say flatly that you are wrong, but I cannot accept them without question.
“Jake here has had suspicions of Anton. I know that, though he has never asserted them to me in so direct a fashion as apparently he has to you.” He paused: then he went on in an introspective manner. “I am getting on in years. I have already had a good innings right here on this ranch. I have watched the country develop. I have seen the settlers come, sow the seeds of their homesteads and small ranches, and watched the crop grow. I have rented them grazing. I have sold them stock. I have made money, and they have made money, and the country has prospered. It is good to see these things; good for me, especially, for I was the first here. I have been lord of the land, and Jake my lieutenant. The old Indian days have gone, and I have looked for nothing but peace and prosperity. I wanted prosperity, for I admit I love it. I am a business man, and I do everything in connection with this ranch on a sound business basis. Not like many of those about me. In short, I am here to make money. And why not? I own the land.”
The last was said as though in argument. Tresler could not help being struck by the manner in which he alluded to the making of money. There was an air of the miser about him when he spoke of it, a hardness about the mouth which the close-trimmed beard made no pretense of concealing. And there was a world of arrogance in the way he said, “I own the land.” However, he was given no time for further observation, for Marbolt seemed to realize his own digression and came back abruptly to the object of his discourse.
“Then this spectre, Red Mask, comes along. He moves with the mystery of the Wandering Jew, and, like that imaginary person, scourges the country wherever he goes, only in a different manner. Anton had been with me three years when this raider appeared. Since then there have been no less than twenty-eight robberies, accompanied more or less by manslaughter.” He became more animated and leaned forward in his chair, pointing the ruler he still held in his hand at Tresler as he named the figures. His red eyes seemed to stare harder and his heavy brows to knit more closely across his forehead. “Yes,” he reiterated, “twenty-eight robberies. And I, with others, have estimated the number and value of stock that has been lost to this scoundrel. In round figures five thousand head of cattle, one hundred and fifty thousand dollars, whisked away, spirited out of this district alone in the course of a few years. One hundred and fifty thousand dollars; one hundred and fifty thousand,” he mouthed the words as though he delighted in the sound of so large a sum of money. Then his whole manner changed. A fiend could not have looked more vicious. “And in all I have lost five hundred beeves to him. Five hundred,” he cried, his voice high-pitched in his anger, “fifteen thousand dollars, besides horses, and—and some of my men wounded, even killed.”
Again he ceased speaking, and relapsed into a brooding attitude. And the two men watched him. His personality fascinated Tresler. He even began to understand something of the general fear he inspired. He thought of Jake who had been so many years with him, and he thought he understood something of the condition he must inspire in any one of no great moral strength who remained with him long. Then he thought of Diane, and moved uneasily. He remembered Jake’s allusion to a cyclone.
At Tresler’s movement the blind man roused at once and proceeded with his story.