The time had come at last when another man stood between his daughter—his greatest treasure on earth—an' himself. I remembered what Friar Tuck had said about the time comin' when she'd be all girl an' would stand before him with the questions of life in her eyes, an' I pitied him, God knows I pitied him.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
CAST STEEL
Jabez had got the rope on himself when Dick came back, an' he spoke to him in the voice of a father sayin' farewell to the son who had gone wrong once too often. "I don't care nothin' about the money, Dick," he said. "You'd 'a' been welcome to all I had; but I can't forgive you about my little girl. You made her love you, you schemed to do it, an' you came here with that end in view. I trusted you from the ground up, but I can see a heap o' things now 'at I wouldn't see before. I had a letter written from Bill Andrews tellin' me 'at he had heard you brag 'at you intended to get holt o' my money, an' that it would pay me to search you instead o' suspectin' him—"
"Where was the letter from?" asked Dick.
"Laramie," sez the ol' man.
"Kind o' curious," sez Dick, an' his vice was as bitter as the dregs o' sin; "that's where Denton came from too."
"You deceived me all along," sez the ol' man, not payin' much heed to Dick, but speakin' mostly to himself. "You know 'at what I hate worse'n anything else is deceit—an' here you've been fast an' loose with women—" Dick tried to say somethin', but the ol' man stopped him. "That was bad enough," he went on, "but I'm no fool; I know the world, an' I could forgive you a good deal; but hang it, I never could forgive you bein' a professional gambler—a man that lives by deceit an' trickery an' false pretenses. Lookin' back now, it strikes me as bein' mighty curious how you got the best o' Piker's deals too. Was Piker or Denton, or whatever his name is, a gambler too?"
"He was," answered Dick in a low tone.