"A thousand dollars."
Brad shot a quick, sidelong look at him. "Wha's wrong now, Dug?"
The ex-foreman of the D Bar Lazy R took his time to answer. He enjoyed the suspense under which his ally was held. "Why, I reckon nothin' a-tall. Only that this mo'nin' I put a match to about a coupla hundred thousand dollars belongin' to Crawford, Sanders, and Hart."
Eagerly Steelman clutched his arm. "You did it, then?"
"Didn't I say I'd do it?" snapped Doble irritably. "D'ya ever know me rue back on a bargain?"
"Never."
"Wha's more, you never will. I fired the chaparral above Bear Cañon. The wind was right. Inside of twenty-four hours the Jackpot locations will go up in smoke. Derricks, pumps, shacks, an' oil; the whole caboodle's doomed sure as I'm a foot high."
The face of the older man looked more wolfish than ever. He rubbed his hands together, washing one over the other so that each in turn was massaged. "Hell's bells! I'm sure glad to hear it. Fire got a good start, you say?"
"I tell you the whole country'll go up like powder."
If Steelman had not just reached Malapi from a visit to one of his sheep camps he would have known, what everybody else in town knew by this time, that the range for fifty miles was in danger and that hundreds of volunteers were out fighting the menace.