“I guess I go to bed zen,” assented Luzon.
He gulped down with relish a nightcap of the old whisky. Then Buck and Tom helped him from his chair.
“It is good to be here,” murmured the Frenchman. “I grow strong again among ze mountains. I never go back—never go back to San Quentin, that one horrid prison.”
“We’ll nurse you like a baby,” said Buck assuringly, as he led the feeble old man into the adjoining room.
CHAPTER XVII—The Bitter Bit
ON the very night of Pierre Luzon’s return, Ben Thurston was in close colloquy with his attorney, summoned specially from New York. It was not only the murder of his son that had brought about this consultation. The owner of San Antonio Rancho, while filled with fury against Dick Willoughby, was also gravely perturbed over other things. Immediately after dinner the two men shut themselves up in Thurston’s office.
Thurston opened the safe and produced a little bundle of neatly-folded, legal-looking documents.
“These are the option papers,” he said gruffly, as he tossed them across the table to the lawyer. “Look them over, Mr. Hawkins.”