“We’ll be back in a short time,” called out Sharkey.
But Thurston, if he had heard, made no reply.
“Now show the way, old fellow,” continued the sleuth, addressing his guide.
A moment later Ben Thurston was alone.
Alone on Comanche Point—gazing over the broad sweep of lands that had been his princely heritage, but which he had now lost forever! The valley lay beneath him, bathed in the mellow evening sunshine. But his eyes were riveted on a single spot. And what a transformation scene for the erstwhile cattle king—this new city with its checkerboard of streets and all around it new homes amid plots of young fruit trees and meadows of alfalfa!
The whole picture was one of fascinating beauty—the city itself the finishing touch that gave it human interest. But in Ben Thurston’s soul there was nothing but bitterness and disgust. He had kept on complaining that he had been unscrupulously plundered by the Los Angeles syndicate, and with the realization now of what enterprise and enlightened progress could achieve, he began to feel that he had been mercilessly stripped of what was rightfully his. Greed and envy and vain regrets were all commingled in his surge of envenomed thoughts. But avarice predominated.
“Good God, to think I parted with the rancho at a beggarly acreage price, when I might have been selling town lots today. There will be a dozen other towns springing up to follow this one.”
In his agony he groaned aloud and covered his eyes with his hands to shut out the hateful sight.
Just at that moment the sound of a twig crackling underfoot smote his ear. He turned round; into his face stole an ashen look of terror as he watched an approaching figure wrapped in a Spanish cloak and crowned by a broad-brimmed sombrero. His haggard eyes asked: “Is it man or ghost?” He would have screamed aloud, but found himself voiceless from fear.
At last the figure stood before him with proudly folded arms.