"Is that so?" Moran's face darkened in swift anger, but he restrained himself. "Well, we'll pass up the pleasantries until after our business is done. You and I've got a few old scores to settle and you won't find me backward when the times comes, my boy. It isn't time yet, although maybe the time isn't so very far away. Now, see here." He leaned over the edge of the cliff to display a folded paper and a fountain-pen. "I have here a quit-claim deed to your ranch, fully made out and legally witnessed, needing only your signature to make it valid. Will you sign it?"
Wade started in spite of himself. This idea was so preposterous that it had never occurred to him as the real motive for his capture. He could scarcely believe that so good a lawyer as Senator Rexhill could be blind to the fact that such a paper, secured under duress, would have no validity under the law. He looked up at the agent in amazement.
"I know what you're thinking, of course," Moran went on, with an evil smile. "We're no fools. I've got here, besides the deed, a check made out to you for ten thousand dollars." He held it up. "You'll remember that we made you that offer once before. You turned it down then, but maybe you'll change your mind now. After you indorse the check I'll deposit it to your credit in the local bank."
The cattleman's face fell as he caught the drift of this complication. That ten thousand dollars represented only a small part of the value of his property was true, but many another man had sold property for less than it was worth. If a perfectly good check for ten thousand dollars, bearing his indorsement, were deposited to the credit of his banking account, the fact would go far to offset any charge of duress that he might later bring. To suppose that he had undervalued his holdings would be no more unreasonable than to suppose that a man of Senator Rexhill's prominence would stoop to physical coercion of an adversary. The question would merely be one of personal probity, with the presumption on the Senator's side.
"Once we get a title to the land, a handle to fight with, we sha'n't care what you try to do," Moran explained further. "We can afford to laugh at you." That seemed to Wade to be true. "If you accept my offer now, I will set you free as soon as this check is in the bank, and the settlement of our personal scores can go over to another time. I assure you that I am just as anxious to get at you as you are to get at me, but I've always made it a rule never to mix pleasure and business. You'll have a fair start to get away. On the other hand, if you refuse, you'll be left here without food. Once each day I'll visit you; at other times you'll be left alone, except when Goat may care to entertain himself by baiting you. You'll be perfectly safe here, guard or no guard, believe me."
Moran chuckled ominously, his thoughts divided between professional pride, excited by the thought of successfully completing the work he had come to Crawling Water to do, and exultation at the prospect that his sufferings while gagged the previous night might be atoned for a thousand times if Wade should refuse to sign the quit-claim.
"In plain speech," said Wade, pale but calm, "you propose to starve me to death."
"Exactly," was the cheerful assurance. "If I were you, I'd think a bit before answering."
Because the cattleman was in the fullest flush of physical vigor, the lust of life was strong in him. Never doubting that Moran meant what he said, Wade was on the point of compliance, thinking to assume the burden later on, of a struggle with Rexhill to regain his ranch. His manhood rebelled at the idea of coercion, but, dead, he could certainly not defend himself; it seemed to him better that he should live to carry on the fight. He would most likely have yielded but for the taunt of cowardice which had already been noised about Crawling Water. True, the charge had sprung from those who liked him least, but it had stung him. He was no coward, and he would not feed such a report now by yielding to Moran. Whatever the outcome of a later fight might be, the fact that he had knuckled under to the agent could never be lived down. Such success as he had won had been achieved by playing a man's part in man's world.
"I'll tell you what I'll do, Moran," he said, finally. "Give me a hand out of this hole, or come down here yourself. Throw aside your gun, but keep your knife. I'll allow you that advantage. Meet me face to face! Damn you, be a man! Anything that you can gain by my signature, you can gain by my death. Get the best of me, if you can, in a man's fight. Pah!" He spat contemptuously. "You're a coward, Moran, a white-livered coward! You don't dare fight with me on anything like equal terms. I'll get out of here somehow, and when I do—by Heaven, I'll corner you, and I'll make you fight."