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Updated: June 24, 2025
Toward the north they strolled, past a huddle of tents, for the most part unlighted. From some came snores and through many a windblown flap, the searching moonlight revealed sleeping figures. On a waste of sand-dunes McTurpin paused. "Now tell me what ye want," he snarled, "and be damned quick about it. I've small time to waste with meddlers."
He was certain that McTurpin had somehow been at the bottom of it. Swiftly he was lost to all reason. He took the weapon from his pocket, examined it carefully to make certain that the caps were unimpaired by moisture. Then he set forth. At the polling station he made casual inquiries, but the ballot-box stuffer for some time had not been seen.
"The pig of a gringo once more. And your father; the little Benito. Hurry, comrades, faster! faster! To the rescue!" Came a third picture, finally more clear, more disconcerting. The entrance to her father's ranch barred by armed riders. McTurpin smiling insolent in the moonlight, bowing to her while Antonio muttered in suppressed wrath.
He was in a rough mood, which ensues from heavy and continued drinking. "Have ye voted, Aleck?" Brown inquired. "I vote when I please," McTurpin answered sullenly, "and I drink when it suits me." He took from an inner pocket of his coat a derringer with silver mountings, laid it meaningly upon the bar. "I ordered a brandy sling." Brown paled, but his eye did not waver. Almost casually, he spoke.
He drew the second man aside across the room, so near to Adrian that the latter stepped back to avoid discovery. "She's a respectable lass," he heard McTurpin whisper. "Yes, it's marry or nothing with her ... and I'm willing enough, the Lord knows. Can ye find me a preacher, old fellow?" He could not make out the other's reply.
Something Spear had read from a letter vexed him dimly like a memory imperfectly recalled. What was there about McTurpin and a child? Whose child? And what had it to do with the veiled woman who had ridden with the gambler from the mines. Impishly the facts eluded him. Inez would know. But Inez must not be bothered just now at this time. He paused and listened. Was that a woman sobbing?
He saw again McTurpin smiling as he won by fraud the stake at cards which he had laid against Benito's ranch; he seemed to hear again the gambler's sneering laugh as he, his father and Adrian had been ambushed at the entrance of his home; in his recollection burned the fellow's insult to his sister; the abduction of Alice, his wife; the murder of his partner.
And with him had vanished Alec McTurpin, though a sly-eyed little man now and then brought messages from the absent leader. In the end Shillaber triumphed, for he persuaded Captain Keyes, commander at the Presidio, that the squatters were defying Federal law.
Hard by he had glimpsed the familiar broad back of McTurpin. At first the half-whispered converse of the trio at the adjoining table was incomprehensible to his ears, but after a time he caught words, phrases, sentences. First the word "squatters" reached him, several times repeated; then, "at Rincon." Finally, "the best lots in the city can be held."
Harpending he knew and liked, despite his Southern sympathies; Rubery he had met; an English lad, high-spirited and well connected. In fact, John Bright soon had his errant nephew out of jail. And when, a few months later, Harpending and Greathouse were released, Benito deemed the story happily ended. He heard nothing from McTurpin. No doubt the fellow was dead.
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