If ever a man were being bound to another by chains of
inseparable gratitude, Oliver Jordan was he! Indeed, the whole affair
was working out so smoothly, so perfectly, that Hervey felt the thrill
of an artist sketching a large and harmonious composition. In the
first place, Red Jim Perris, whom he hated with unutterable fervor
because the younger man filled him with dread, would be turned, as
Hervey expressed it, "into buzzard food." And Hervey would be praised
for the act! Oliver Jordan, owing the preservation of his daughter
from a luckless marriage to the vigilance of his foreman, could
never regret the life-contract which he had drawn up. No doubt that
contract, as it stood, could never hold water in the law. But Jordan's
gratitude would make it proof. Last of all, and best of all, when
Perris was disposed of, Marianne would never be able to remain on the
ranch. She would go to forget her sorrow among her school friends in
the East. And Hervey, undisputed lord and master of the ranch, could
bleed it white in half a dozen years and leave it a mere husk,
overladen with mortgages.
No wonder a song was in the heart of the foreman as he sealed the
letter.
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