Mike was older, and had been brought up in a hard school.

"Feelin's don't count one way or the other, I guess," he replied contemptuously. "When it comes to takin' the dollars out of the other feller's pocket I'm allus ready and willin'. You can allus help him out after you beat him. Private charity after the deal is a sort of liqueur after a good dinner."

"Charity?" Gordon laughed.

"Well, maybe you got another name for it," retorted Mike indifferently.

"Several," laughed Gordon. "Rob a man and give him something back needs another name."

"They call it 'charity' in the newspapers when them philanthropists hand back part of the wad they've collected from a deluded public--anyway. It don't seem different to me." Mike's tone was sharply argumentative.

"It isn't different," agreed Gordon. "They're both a salve to conscience. The only thing is that public charity of the latter nature has the advantage of personal advertisement. I'm learning things, Mike. I'm learning that the moment you get groping for dollars, you've just tied up into a sack all the goodness and virtue handed out to you by the Creator and--drowned it."

Though Gordon was never able to carry any sort of conviction on these matters with Mike, his occasional regrets found a cordial sympathy in Hazel Mallinsbee. She watched him very closely during the days of waiting for the maturity of his schemes. She knew the impulse which had inspired him. She understood it thoroughly. It was humor, and she liked him all the better for it. She realized to the full all the depth of love Gordon possessed for his father, an affection which was not one whit the less for the fact that to all intents and purposes his object was the highway robbery of that parent.

It was something of a paradox, but one which she perfectly understood.

She felt that it was a case of two strong personalities opposed to each other in friendly rivalry. Gordon had propounded his beliefs to a man of great capacity whose convictions were opposed. Opportunity had served the younger man, who now intended to drive his point home ruthlessly, with a deep, kindly humor lying behind his every act. She could imagine, though she had never seen James Carbhoy, these two men, big and strong and kindly, sitting opposite each other, smoking luxuriously when it was all over, discussing the whole situation in the friendliest possible spirit.

Her father offered little comment. Curiously enough, this man, who had so much at stake, deep in his heart did not approve of the whole thing.

It was not that he possessed ordinary scruples. Had the conspiracy been opposed to anybody but Gordon's father he would have been heart and soul in the affair. He would have reveled in the daring of the trick which Gordon intended to carry out. As it was, he was old-fashioned enough to see some sort of heinous ingratitude and offense in the fact of a son pitted piratically against his father.

However, he, like his daughter, watched closely for every sign this son of his father gave. But while Hazel watched with sympathy and real understanding, he saw only with the searching eyes of the observer who is seeking the manner of man with whom he is dealing.

Once only, during the days of waiting and comparative inaction, he gave vent to his disapproval, and even then his manner was purely that of regret.

They were sitting together in the evening sunlight on the veranda of the ranch.

"Gordon, boy," he said in his deep, rumbling voice, after a long, thoughtful pause; "if I had a son, which I guess I haven't, it would hurt like sin to think he'd act towards me same as you're doing to your father."

His remark did not bring forth an immediate reply. When, however, it finally came, accompanied as it was by twinkling, mischievous blue eyes, and a smile of infinite amusement, Hazel, who was standing in the doorway of the house, fully understood, although it left her father unconvinced.

"If you were my father, I guess you wouldn't hate it a--little bit,"

Gordon said cheerfully. Then his eyes wandered in Hazel's direction, and presently came back again to her father's face. "Maybe I'll live many a long year yet, and if I do I can tell you right here that perhaps there'll only be one greater moment in my life, than the moment in which we win out on this scheme. I just want you to remember, all through, that I love my old dad with all that's in me. Same as Hazel loves you."

From that moment Gordon heard no further protest throughout all the preparations that had to be made. Silas Mallinsbee cheerfully acquiesced in all that was demanded of him. Furthermore, he tacitly acknowledged Gordon's absolute leadership.

Under that leadership much had to be done of a subtle, secret nature.

The impression had to be created that the Buffalo Point interests had completely abandoned the game. It was an anxious time--anxious and watchful. David Slosson was kept under close surveillance by the four conspirators, and, to this end, Gordon and Silas Mallinsbee spent most of their time in Snake's Fall, which further added to the impression that their interests had been abandoned.

Having succeeded in bribing Steve Mason, the telegraph operator, in the first place, Peter McSwain further bought him body and soul over to their interests. Mallinsbee's purse was wide open for all such contingencies, and Steve was left with the comfortable feeling that, whatever happened, he had made sufficient money to throw up his job before any crash came, and clear out to safety with a capital he could never have honestly made out of his work.

Thus Gordon had been enabled at last to dispatch his urgent code message to his father, purporting as it did to come from David Slosson.

It was an irresistible demand for the Union Grayling and Ukataw Railroad President's immediate presence in Snake's Fall. It had been made as strong as David Slosson would have dared to make it. Nor, when the answer to it arrived, would it ever reach the agent. Nothing was forgotten. Every detail had been prepared for with a forethought almost incredible in a man of Gordon's temperament and experience.

It was late evening the second day after the dispatching of Gordon's urgent message. He had not long returned home to the ranch with Hazel's father from a day amidst the excitement reigning in Snake's Fall. Hazel was in the house clearing away supper and generally superintending her domestic affairs. Silas Mallinsbee was round at the corrals in consultation with his ranch foreman. Gordon was alone on the veranda smoking and gazing thoughtfully out at the wonderful ruddy sunset.

For him there was none of the peace which prevailed over the scene that spread out before him. How could there be? Every moment of the two days which had intervened since the dispatching of his message had been fraught with tense, nervous doubt. Every plan he had made depended on the answer to that message, and he felt that the time-limit for the answer's arrival had been reached. It must come now within a few hours. He felt that he must get it to-morrow morning or never. And when it came what--what then? Would it be the reply he desired, or an uncompromising negative? He felt that the whole thing depended upon the relations between his father and his agent. He was inclined to think, from the very nature of the work his father had intrusted to Slosson, that those relations were of the greatest confidence. He hoped it was so, but he could not be absolutely sure. Therefore the strain of waiting was hard to bear.

While his busy thoughts teemed through his brain, and his unappreciative gaze roamed over the purpling of the distant hills, his ears, rendered unusually acute in the deep evening calm, suddenly caught the faint, distant rumble of a vehicle moving over the trail.

His quick eyes turned alertly. There was only one trail, and that was the road to Snake's Fall. The alertness of his eyes communicated itself to his body. He moved off the veranda and gazed down the trail, of which he now obtained a clear view. A team and buggy were approaching at a rapid rate, and, even at that distance, he fancied he recognized it as the one of Mike Callahan's which he had himself driven.

A wave of excitement swept over him. Could it be that----?

He went back to the veranda. The impulse to summon Mallinsbee was hard to resist. But he forced himself to calmness.

Five minutes later Mike Callahan drove up, and his team stood drooping and sweating.

"Say," he cried, in aggrieved fashion, "it jest set me whoopin' mad when that wire-tappin' operator fell into my barn with his blamed message, twenty minutes after you an' Mallinsbee had left. Look at the time of it. It had buzzed over the wire ha'f an hour before you went."

Then he began to grin, and a keen light shone in his Irish eyes. "But when I see who it was from I guessed I'd need to get busy. 'Tain't in your fancy code. It's jest as plain as my face. Read it. The game's up to us. Guess it's our move next."

But Gordon was paying no attention to the Irishman. He was reading the brief message which at last set all his doubts at rest.

"Arrive Snake's Fall noon seventeenth."

It was addressed to Slosson, but there was no signature.

"That's to-morrow." Gordon's eyes lit. Then a shadow of doubt crossed his smiling face. "It's dead safe Steve hasn't sent a copy to Slosson?"

Mike grinned.

"Steve don't draw his wad till--we're sure."

"No."

At that moment Mallinsbee appeared round the angle of the building.

Gordon's face was wreathed in smiles as he turned to him.

"We get to work--to-night," he said.

Mallinsbee nodded, without a sign of the other's excitement.

"So I guessed when I see Mike's team. Peter wise?"

"Yep." The Irishman's spirits had risen to a great pitch. "I put him wise."

"Splendid. He's got everything ready?"

Gordon was thinking rapidly.

"Better send your team round to the barn," said Mallinsbee, with that thoughtful care he had for all animals. "Then come inside and get some supper."

Mike prepared to drive round to the barn.

"I see the rack in his yard," he grinned.