They were sitting together in the evening sunlight on the veranda of the ranch.
"Gordon, boy," he said in his deep, rumbling voice, after a long, thoughtful pause; "if I had a son, which I guess I haven't, it would hurt like sin to think he'd act towards me same as you're doing to your father."
His remark did not bring forth an immediate reply. When, however, it finally came, accompanied as it was by twinkling, mischievous blue eyes, and a smile of infinite amusement, Hazel, who was standing in the doorway of the house, fully understood, although it left her father unconvinced.
"If you were my father, I guess you wouldn't hate it a—little bit," Gordon said cheerfully. Then his eyes wandered in Hazel's direction, and presently came back again to her father's face. "Maybe I'll live many a long year yet, and if I do I can tell you right here that perhaps there'll only be one greater moment in my life, than the moment in which we win out on this scheme. I just want you to remember, all through, that I love my old dad with all that's in me. Same as Hazel loves you."
From that moment Gordon heard no further protest throughout all the preparations that had to be made. Silas Mallinsbee cheerfully acquiesced in all that was demanded of him. Furthermore, he tacitly acknowledged Gordon's absolute leadership.
Under that leadership much had to be done of a subtle, secret nature. The impression had to be created that the Buffalo Point interests had completely abandoned the game. It was an anxious time—anxious and watchful. David Slosson was kept under close surveillance by the four conspirators, and, to this end, Gordon and Silas Mallinsbee spent most of their time in Snake's Fall, which further added to the impression that their interests had been abandoned.
Having succeeded in bribing Steve Mason, the telegraph operator, in the first place, Peter McSwain further bought him body and soul over to their interests. Mallinsbee's purse was wide open for all such contingencies, and Steve was left with the comfortable feeling that, whatever happened, he had made sufficient money to throw up his job before any crash came, and clear out to safety with a capital he could never have honestly made out of his work.
Thus Gordon had been enabled at last to dispatch his urgent code message to his father, purporting as it did to come from David Slosson. It was an irresistible demand for the Union Grayling and Ukataw Railroad President's immediate presence in Snake's Fall. It had been made as strong as David Slosson would have dared to make it. Nor, when the answer to it arrived, would it ever reach the agent. Nothing was forgotten. Every detail had been prepared for with a forethought almost incredible in a man of Gordon's temperament and experience.
It was late evening the second day after the dispatching of Gordon's urgent message. He had not long returned home to the ranch with Hazel's father from a day amidst the excitement reigning in Snake's Fall. Hazel was in the house clearing away supper and generally superintending her domestic affairs. Silas Mallinsbee was round at the corrals in consultation with his ranch foreman. Gordon was alone on the veranda smoking and gazing thoughtfully out at the wonderful ruddy sunset.
For him there was none of the peace which prevailed over the scene that spread out before him. How could there be? Every moment of the two days which had intervened since the dispatching of his message had been fraught with tense, nervous doubt. Every plan he had made depended on the answer to that message, and he felt that the time-limit for the answer's arrival had been reached. It must come now within a few hours. He felt that he must get it to-morrow morning or never. And when it came what—what then? Would it be the reply he desired, or an uncompromising negative? He felt that the whole thing depended upon the relations between his father and his agent. He was inclined to think, from the very nature of the work his father had intrusted to Slosson, that those relations were of the greatest confidence. He hoped it was so, but he could not be absolutely sure. Therefore the strain of waiting was hard to bear.