“And fourth——­” he suggested, therefore.

“Fourth,” rapped out Oldham, briskly, “you injure George Pollock.”

“George Pollock!” echoed Bob, trying vainly to throw a tone of ingenuous surprise into his voice.

“Certainly; George Pollock,” repeated Oldham.  “I arrived in Sycamore Flats at the moment when Pollock murdered Plant.  I know positively that you were an eye-witness to the deed.  If you testify in one case, I shall certainly call upon you to testify in the other.  Furthermore,” he turned his gray eyes on Bob, and for the second time the young man was permitted to see an implacable hostility, “although not on the scene itself, I can myself testify, and will, that you held the murderer’s horse during the deed, and assisted Pollock to escape.  Furthermore, I can testify, and can bring a competent witness, that while supposed to be estimating Government timber in the Basin, you were in communication with Pollock.”

“Saleratus Bill!” cried Bob, enlightened as to the trailer’s recent activities in the Basin.

“It will be easy to establish not only Pollock’s guilt, but your own as accessory.  That will put you hard and fast behind the bars—­where you belong.”

In this last speech Oldham made his one serious mistake of the interview.  So long as he had appealed to Bob’s feelings for, and sense of duty toward, other men, he had succeeded well in still further confusing the young man’s decision.  But at the direct personal threat, Bob’s combative spirit flared.  Suddenly his troubled mind was clarified, as though Oldham’s menace had acted as a chemical reagent to precipitate all his doubts.  Whatever the incidental hardships, right must prevail.  And, as always, in the uprooting of evil, some unlucky innocent must suffer.  It is the hardship of life, inevitable, not to be blinked at if a man is to be a man, and do a man’s part.  He leaned forward with so swift a movement that Oldham involuntarily dodged back.

“You tell your boss,” said Bob, “that nothing on God’s earth can keep me out of court.”

He threw away his half-smoked cigar and went back to the chair car.  The sight of Oldham was intolerable to him.

The words were said, and the decision made.  In his heart he knew the matter irrevocable.  For a few moments he experienced a feeling of relief and freedom, as when a swimmer first gets his head above the surf that has tumbled him.  These fine-spun matters of ethical balance had confused and wearied his spirit.  He had become bewildered among such varied demands on his personal decision.  It was a comfort to fall back on the old straight rule of right conduct no matter what the consequences.  The essentials of the situation were not at all altered:  Baker was guilty of the rankest fraud; Welton was innocent of every evil intent and should never be punished for what he had been unwillingly and doubtfully persuaded to permit; Orde senior had acquired his lands