Moran nodded.
"Him and that—girl—the Purnell girl." Stirred more by the other's expression of contempt than by the full half pint of whiskey he had imbibed, he crashed his fist down on the desk. "Mind what you say now, because, by God, I'm in no mood to take anything from you. He got the drop on me, you understand. Let it go at that."
"It's gone right enough—all gone." Rexhill groaned. "Why, he only needs to publish those plots to make this a personal fight between us and every property owner in the valley. They'll tar and feather us, if they don't kill us outright. It'll be gold with them—gold. Nothing else will count from now on."
"I'll get back at him yet!" growled Moran.
"You'll...." The Senator threateningly raised his gorilla-like arms, but let them drop helplessly again. "How did they get into the safe? Did you leave it open?"
"Do you think I'm a fool?" Moran fixed his baleful eyes upon his employer, as he leaned heavily, but significantly, across the flat desk. "Say, let's look ahead to to-morrow, not back to last night. Do you hear? I'll do the remembering of last night; you forget it!"
Rexhill tried to subdue him with his own masterful gaze, but somehow the power was lacking. Moran was in a dangerous frame of mind, and past the dominance of his employer. He had but one thought, that of vengeance upon the man who had misused him, to which everything else had for the time being to play second.
"You talk like I let them truss me up for fun," he went on. "I did it because I had to, because I was looking into the muzzle of a six-shooter in the hands of a desperate man; that was why. Do you get me? And I don't need to be reminded of it. No, by Heaven! My throat's as dry yet as a fish-bone, and every muscle in me aches like hell! I'll remember it all right, and he'll pay. Don't you have any worries about that."
Rexhill was sufficiently a captain of men to have had experience of such moods in the past, and he knew the futility of arguing. He carefully chose a cigar from his case, seated himself, and began to smoke.