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"Of course you don't see, and yet you must." Tarboe then told the story of the making of the two wills, doing justice to John Grier. "He never did things like anyone else, and he didn't in dying. He loved you, Carnac. In spite of all he said and did he believed in you. He knew you had the real thing in you, if you cared to use it." "Good God! Good God!" was all Carnac could at first say.
"I'd like to see Tarboe," Carnac said suddenly. "He ain't the same as you," snapped John Grier. "He's bigger, broader, and buskier." A malicious smile crossed over his face. "He's a bandit that's what he is. He's got a chest like a horse and lungs like the ocean. When he's got a thing, he's got it like a nail in a branch of young elm. He's a dandy, that fellow." Suddenly passion came to his eyes.
There was silence again for a moment, deep and painful, and then Carnac spoke. "Mother, I don't think father is well. I see a great change in him. He hasn't long to travel, and some day you'll have everything. He might make you run the business, with Tarboe as manager." She shuddered slightly. "With Tarboe I never thought of that with Tarboe!... Are you going to wait for your father?
What he said to his chief had its effect, and soon there was a white flag flying on the tug. It was at once answered with a white handkerchief of Joan's. Then the tug slowed up, the Ninety-Nine came on gaily, and at a good distance came up to the wind, and stood off. "What do you want?" asked Tarboe through his speaking-tube. "A parley," called Mr. Martin.
No one thought it strange that a month later the eldest son of the Tarboe family had been found dead in the woods with a gun in his hand and a bullet through his heart. No one had ever linked the death of Denzil's loved one with that of Almeric Tarboe.
The only embarrassment to be seen was on the faces of Fabian and his wife. Mrs. Grier and Carnac showed nothing. Carnac did not even move; by neither gesture nor motion of body did he show aught. At the close of it all, he came to Tarboe and held out a hand. "Good luck to you, Tarboe!" he said. "You'll make a success, and that's what he wanted more than anything else.
Nothing could save it. He'd spoil it, because he don't care for it. I bought Fabian out. As for my wife, she couldn't run it, and " "You could sell it," interrupted Tarboe. "Sell it! Sell it!" said Grier wildly. "Sell it to whom?" "To Belloc," was the malicious reply. The demon of anger seized the old man. "You say that to me you that I should sell to Belloc!
"Did he tell you so?" she asked with apparent interest. "I've had a letter from him, and in it he says he is with me 'to the knife! That's good. Tarboe has a big hold on rivermen, and he may carry with him some of the opposition. It was a good letter if puzzling." "How, puzzling?"
She had that almost impossible gift in a woman the power of telling a tale whimsically. It was said that once, when Orvay Lafarge, a new Inspector of Customs, came to spy out the land, she kept him so amused by her quaint wit, that he sat in the doorway gossiping with her, while Tarboe and two others unloaded and safely hid away a cargo of liquors from the Ninety-Nine.
John Grier does as much thinking in an hour as most of us do in a month, and with Tarboe he'll beat you dead. Tarboe is young; he's got the vitality of a rhinoceros. He knows the business from the bark on the tree. He's a flyer, is Tarboe, and you might have been in Tarboe's place and succeeded to the business." Fabian threw out his arms. "But no!
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