To yield to blackmail would be fatal; not to yield to it--he
could not see his way. He had long ago forgotten the fire, and blood, and
shame. No Whisperer reminded him of that black page in the history of his
life; he had been immune of conscience. He could not understand this man
before him. It was as bad a case of human degradation as ever he had
seen--he remembered the stalwart, if dissipated, ranchman who had acted
on his instigation. He knew now that he had made a foolish blunder then,
that the scheme had been one of his failures; but he had never looked on
it as with eyes reproving crime. As a hundred thoughts tending towards
the solution of the problem by which he was faced, flashed through his
mind, and he rejected them all, he repeated mechanically the phrase, "I
suppose you are lying now."
"Dupont is here--not a mile away," was the reply. "He will give proof. He
would go to jail or to the gallows to put you there, if you do not pay.
He is a devil--Dupont."
Still the great man could not see his way out. He must temporise for a
little longer, for rashness might bring scandal or noise; and near by was
his daughter, the apple of his eye.
"What do you want? How much did you figure you could get out of me, if I
let you bleed me?" he asked sneeringly and coolly.
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